


Her Liquor’s Top Shelf

by Helholden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Developing Relationship, F/M, Humor, M/M, Organized Crime, Secret Relationship, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-12 15:06:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 119
Words: 517,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/812921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helholden/pseuds/Helholden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa Stark has had an easy life as a normal teenager until she gets embroiled in the life of Sandor Clegane, a man who seemingly has a simple life himself of owning and running a bar. Clegane has a dark past, though, and he owes debts. When his old boss comes calling on those debts, Sandor can’t say no. Under the guise of being a nightclub owner, Renly Baratheon runs half of the city against the likes of the corrupt politician, Tywin Lannister. The balance of power is shifting, though. Jaime Lannister, who has broken the law under his badge, turns his eyes onto Sandor. Meanwhile, Renly turns his eyes onto Jaime and the entire Lannister family. What results is a war unleashed onto the very streets of Kingsland, pulling Sansa’s own family into its clutches and changing their lives forever—and no one more than herself and her sister, Arya Stark.</p><p>Modern AU set in the city of Kingsland. Features Rebellious teen!Sansa, Bartender!Sandor, Wild child!Arya, Mechanic!Gendry, Cop!Jaime, Cop!Brienne, Rookie!Loras, Club owner!Renly, and more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Diet Mountain Dew

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Irenka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irenka/gifts).



> **A/N #1:** I'm basing most, if not all, descriptions on the actors for this story (some of them aged down, some of them aged up). Normally, I picture my own little book interpretations and stick to the book descriptions, but with this being a modern setting, I've taken some liberties. Also, Sandor won't be horribly scarred. Just a little bit. Liberties, I say, liberties! ;)
> 
>  **A/N #2:** This is a multi-POV story. **It is centered around Sandor and Sansa** , but other characters play very prominent roles. Included POVs so far are Sansa, Sandor, Brienne, Jaime, Loras, Renly, Ned Stark, and (as of Chapter 70) Arya Stark. The characters, due to big changes in their histories and life experiences, have also undergone some changes to fit into a modern society. Keep this in mind while reading. Can you dig it? If you can, get your shovel. ‘Cause we’re going down a rabbit hole, and it’s a long way to China.
> 
>  **NEW AUTHOR'S NOTE AS OF 4/30/15:** I will no longer respond to comments that suggest/request changes to this story. I've responded to them a million times, and the answer is still no. I will not be changing something I've written because someone would have preferred a different route. Comments are always welcome, but do not request changes. This is not a multi-author story. It's just me. I have the entire fic mapped out to the very end, so everything has already been written in my head. I am asking that readers please respect this. If you would have preferred a different story, the world of fanfic allows you to create your own. This, however, is my monster, and I have a certain vision for it. Things will not always be neat. Things will not always be tidy. Humans will be humans, and yes, they will make mistakes and do horrible things, etc. Thank you for understanding.
> 
> Finally, for everyone who managed to get through the first twenty-five chapters of lighthearted romping and thought, "Oh, what a silly, ridiculous, tooth-rotting AU!" I am sorry for deceiving you. So very, very sorry.

  _* * *  
_  


 

Joffrey pressed his foot down harder on the pedal. Sansa knew it because she heard the roar of the engine above the wind in her ears, singing out from under the hood loud enough to make her heart skip a beat in fear. Her hands clutched for purchase onto the door and the armrest, but her grip on the leather did nothing to ease the fright accumulating in her chest. Joffrey hollered above the wind, laughing like a maniac and half drunk from what he had been drinking earlier. He shouldn’t have been driving. Sansa closed her eyes and prayed the vehicle didn’t crash and she didn’t die on the side of the road with nothing left of her but bits and pieces for her parents to see on the evening news.

 

“Do you think it can go any _faster_?” Joffrey called out above the noise of the engine and the howl of the wind. When Sansa opened her eyes and looked at him, he was grinning like a madman at her. The engine roared again, his foot pressing harder on the pedal. Meryn and Boros, Joffrey’s stupid friends from stupid school, were laughing in the backseat like it was funny, but it wasn’t funny. Sansa was scared. Couldn’t they see that?

 

“Go faster, Joff!” Boros hollered, slapping the back of Joffrey’s seat. He cackled and fell backwards, clearly drunk as well. They had all been drinking, even Sansa. She knew she shouldn’t have been, but Joffrey had made them some fake identification cards and they looked real enough. Sansa thought they were only going to the store to buy the alcohol and then go back to Meryn’s house to drink it. His parents were out of town, and with him being eighteen, they allowed him to stay home alone while they were gone.

 

After way too much to drink, though, Joffrey had wanted to go for a spin. Sansa had tried to talk them out of it, but they had made fun of her and she didn’t want to be the goody two shoes that wrecked the night, so she had agreed to come with them. Only now she was really regretting her decision, and she just wanted to go home before everything went horribly, horribly wrong.

 

“Joffrey, watch out!” Sansa screamed as he veered off the road. Joffrey snatched the wheel back on course, the corvette slowing down somewhat as he tried to regain control, but Sansa’s heart was pounding dangerously hard inside of her ribcage and her knuckles were ghost white from clutching too hard onto the armrests.

 

“Hey, Joff,” Meryn suddenly said, leaning forward from the backseat. “Why don’t we go to that pub your uncle likes so much?”

 

“Which uncle?” Joffrey asked, making a face at the question.

 

“Your uncle _Tyrion_ ,” Meryn drawled out. “He’s the only uncle of yours with a drinking problem. Jaime doesn’t do anything.”

 

“That’s because Uncle Jaime’s a copper,” Joffrey said snidely. “He _can’t_ do anything.” Boros and Meryn both snickered at that, and Joffrey looked smug despite the fact that he didn’t even make a joke and just stated something out loud. Sansa was really starting to wonder why she still dated him. The more time she spent around him, the more she realized what a horrible person he was underneath. She had been smitten with his golden hair and bright eyes at first, but she soon found she could barely bring herself to look at him anymore, let alone _kiss_ him. His lips were wormy looking, and his eyes were cruel.

 

If she was honest with herself, she didn’t break up with him because she was scared of him. Joffrey wasn’t normal. She saw that sometimes, and it scared her. Sansa swallowed past a catch in her throat at the thought. She was afraid of what he might do if she tried to break up with him. If tonight was anything to go by, he was crazy and sometimes he was also really rough and nasty with her—grabbing her arms, snatching her, and yelling at her.

 

Sansa shook away the uncomfortable thoughts from her head and tried to join in on the conversation. “What’s the name of the pub?” she asked Meryn.

 

“It’s called Clegane’s Keep,” Meryn said matter-of-factly. “Well, it used to be called The Yellow Kennel or something like that, I don’t remember.”

 

“The _Yellow_ Kennel?” Joffrey asked, a high-pitched laugh escaping his throat. “God, what did they call it that for? All of the piss from all of the drunkards over the floor?” He burst out cackling at his own joke, and Meryn and Boros joined with him, laughing hysterically from the backseat. Sansa didn’t think it was that funny, and she made a face at them and rolled her eyes, but they were too busy laughing to see it.

 

“Well, I think we should go there,” Sansa said, though she only suggested it because she wanted Joffrey to pull the car over so she could get out of it—anything to make him stop the car. They weren’t going as fast now as they had been before Joffrey nearly ran off the road, but that didn’t make Sansa feel any safer.

 

“Sure, we’ll go there,” Joffrey said, grinning his hideous grin again, and Sansa had to look away from him. She clutched her cardigan around herself, willing away the chilly night air and wishing she had a coat with her to wear. Joffrey wasn’t a decent enough boyfriend to offer her the one on his back. It was yet another reason why she should break up with him. He was such a selfish asshole, and Sansa frowned at the thought as it crept into her head.

 

When they finally pulled the car over, Sansa had never been gladder. She hurried out of the passenger side door and shut it behind herself, looking up at the establishment before her. It was a nice place, two stories high and dark cherry wood with old school windows and an appearance that looked like something out of the thirties or forties, and it had the best location in the city. It wasn’t shoved in some dark corner, but right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the night life in Kingsland.

 

Sansa walked ahead of the others and pulled open the door. There was a whole crowd already inside, and she didn’t recognize any of them. Feeling a little safer, Sansa stepped inside and let the door fall shut behind her. She slowly gazed about the bar and floor and booths to take everything in as her feet walked her carefully through the thick swarm of bodies. She pulled her inquisitive gaze away from admiring the décor long enough to look for a seat. There was one open at the bar, so she pushed her way over to the stool and climbed up in it to seat herself down. It whirled from side to side, and Sansa stayed it by slapping her palms against the countertop and holding them there.

 

Her slap unknowingly drew the attention of a man behind the bar. As he turned around and stood to full height, Sansa found her eyes growing a little wider. He was _really_ tall. He had to have been over six feet. “What can I get for you, mi—” he began, but he paused and froze once he raised his eyes to look at her.

 

He was handsome, Sansa thought, her eyes staring back at him dumbly. He looked nothing like Joffrey, but Joffrey was boy and this was a man. He had dark hair close shaven to his head, and though his hairline was a little receding, it really didn’t take away from his looks. His brow was heavy, but he had these cute little creases running from the sides of his nose to his mouth, and when he stared at her, it hung open. The only mark on his face was some mild scarring on the left side, but if anything, Sansa thought it was kind of sexy. Sansa blamed her thoughts on the alcohol she drank earlier. Yes, it had to have been the alcohol.

 

His eyes narrowed down at her, and he leaned over the bar to cross his arms across the countertop. “Let me see your ID,” he said in a low voice, and Sansa thought his voice was really, really nice and deep. He was very close to her, and just the sound of his voice sent tingles through her shoulders like the aftermath of a chill.

 

Sansa broke away from her reverie long enough to reach down and fumble in her pockets to find the fake ID that had been given to her by Joffrey. Her hands were unsteady as she put it on top of the counter. The man glanced down at it, putting his hand on top of the piece of plastic and sliding it towards him. He picked it up, and his eyes roved over the card for maybe all of three seconds.

 

“This is a fake ID,” he said bluntly, flicking it down onto the countertop. Sansa glanced down at the piece of plastic, her nervousness making her begin to shake. When she raised her eyes, his dark gaze was boring into hers. He leaned forward on the countertop again and lifted his eyebrows at her. “I know a fake ID when I see one.”

 

Sansa opened her mouth to speak, but found no words to come out. Suddenly, she was inexplicably afraid. Was he going to call the police? What if Joffrey’s Uncle Jaime showed up and ruined everything, and they got into trouble and Sansa got grounded for a _month_? Or worse, what if there was jail time? She had been drinking before she came here, and if they tested her—

 

“How old are you?” he asked in the same frank tone of his, his arms still crossed over the countertop, and Sansa closed her mouth to swallow past her nervousness in order to speak.

 

“Seventeen,” she said, trembling.

 

“Seventeen and how many months?” he asked then.

 

Sansa was dumbfounded by the question, and slow to answer him. “Four,” she said.

 

“So,” he continued, “you’re seventeen and four months, but according to your ID, it says you are . . . ” He leaned over closer to read the plastic one more time, did some math in his head, and said, “Twenty and six months, so that’s three years and two months of lies.” He was looking at her again now, narrowing his eyes again. “Do you know what they do to little girls with three years and two months of lies?”

 

It all burst out of Sansa at once. “Oh, _please_ don’t call anyone,” Sansa begged him. “My parents will kill me, and my boyfriend is outside, and his uncle is a policeman, and if his parents find out we’ve been drinking—”

 

His eyes shot open at that. “You’ve already been drinking?”

 

“Oh, no,” Sansa moaned, covering her mouth.

 

Just then, she was saved from further incrimination when she heard Joffrey hollering her name over the crowd. She looked over her shoulder and spotted him over the bodies. Joffrey noticed her and pushed through the patrons to reach her, Boros and Meryn behind him. Joffrey snatched her arm, yanking at her and nearly making her fall out of the stool. His grip was so tight it hurt.

 

“Come on, Sansa,” Joffrey snapped at her. “We’re going to race the Kettleblack brothers. They’re out in the parking lot—”

 

“ _No_ ,” Sansa said forcefully, trying to pull her arm away from his grasp. “I’m not getting back into a car with you driving.”

 

Joffrey’s face twisted in rage, disbelief in his eyes that she would refuse him. “You’ll _get_ back in the car with me if I _tell_ you—”

 

“I think you need to unhand the young lady,” said the man behind the bar with a cold tone of finality. It sent shivers down Sansa’s spine. She was afraid of what would happen next. Joffrey’s wide eyes looked behind the counter over her shoulder at the man, and he gritted his teeth.

 

“You don’t talk to me that way,” Joffrey hissed. He jutted his finger at his chest. “Do you _know_ who I am?”

 

“A spoiled little brat with a stick up his arse,” the man replied, and Sansa realized she was shaking as Joffrey’s grip tightened on her.

 

“Ow, you’re hurting me—” she said, trying to pull away from him again.

 

“I will _take_ her with me if I—”

 

“And I’ll bash your head against that counter and break both your wrists, boy,” the man said before Joffrey could finish. “This is my establishment, and this young lady is my guest. If you don’t take your hand off my guest, it’s going to get really ugly for you.”

 

Joffrey’s mouth faltered as he looked back and forth between Sansa and the man behind her. She watched his face with fear, afraid of what he might do, when he let her go with a forceful shove that sent her against the bar with a sharp jab of pain through her back. Joffrey stormed off through the crowd with Boros and Meryn, cursing and yelling obscenities along the way. Sansa felt her lip trembling as she heard the engine rev outside, and she clutched her arms around herself as the corvette’s tires squealed against the asphalt and zoomed away.

 

“Are you all right?”

 

Sansa slowly turned around in the swirling stool until she was facing the bar again. The man was looking at her with concern in his eyes, and Sansa pressed her lips together tightly and nodded her head. He seemed to debate something for a moment, and then he reached under the counter and pulled out a glass. He tapped it down on the countertop in front of her.

 

“I’ll give you one on the house,” he said, and then he paused as he regarded her across the counter. “Non-alcoholic,” he added with a tone that said it was not up for debate.

 

For the first time that night, Sansa found herself smiling. “Ahh,” she said aloud as she thought about what she wanted to drink. She bit her bottom lip for a moment, and then she looked up and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “Diet Mountain Dew?” Sansa asked, waiting to see if he had any.

 

He looked thoughtful for a moment. Eventually, he shrugged himself and turned around to rummage behind the counter. He came back a moment later with a can of Diet Mountain Dew, placing it on the countertop in front of her next to the glass. The can was covered in condensation, and when she touched it, it was cold against her fingers, so she didn’t need any ice.

 

“Thank you . . . ” Sansa said, but she trailed off because she didn’t know his name.

 

“Sandor Clegane,” he said. “Owner of Clegane’s Keep.” His eyes lifted to the ceiling and gazed around the pub before falling back to hers again. Sansa looked up after him to gaze at the ceiling, silently admiring the fine craftsmanship. It was everywhere in the pub. The whole place was lovely and warm.

 

“It’s really nice,” Sansa told him, glancing back at him. “I thought you were just a bartender . . . ”

 

“Bartender, manager, owner,” Sandor said, though he didn’t say it like it was anything to brag about. He just said it as if he was telling her what the weather would be like for tomorrow. “I have other people that work for me and help out,” he added, and he pointed across the crowd at two people. One was at the far end of the bar a ways away from them, and the other one was out in the crowd, serving the tables. “That’s two of them right there.”

 

Sansa looked at them and smiled again. She turned her gaze back to Sandor, the smile still there. “Well, thank you, Sandor, for helping me.”

 

He nodded his head at her, silently accepting her thanks, and crossed his arms over his chest as he furrowed his brow. “Who was that prick, anyway?”

 

“My boyfriend,” she said softly, embarrassed to admit it. “Soon to be ex-boyfriend,” Sansa added quickly, though. “I’ve been meaning to break up with him for a while. He’s a horrible person.”

 

“He looks like a psychotic kitten.”

 

Sansa found herself giggling at that. “Yeah, he kind of does, doesn’t he?”

 

Sandor had been leaning back against something, but he pushed himself upright again and put his hands down on the counter. “Look, I’ve got to get back to work, but you’re welcome to stay here until someone comes by to pick you up. If you need anything, just holler.”

 

Sansa nodded at his offer and watched as he returned to work, helping the other people crowded around the bar. She sunk off into her own little world as she slowly sobered up, and by the time she did, the pub was almost empty and she was one of a handful still left, though the others were already clearing out. She only took the one drink from him that whole night, sipping it slowly until the bubbles all faded and the drink became flat. Sansa had gotten up once to go to the bathroom, and she came back to return to her seat at the bar.

 

As the last patron in the bar, she caught Sandor’s attention as he was closing it up for the night. He must have not noticed before he began closing up that she was still there, sitting at the bar all by herself, because he paused in the middle of his work when he saw her and looked taken aback by her presence. Sandor stopped whatever it was he was doing at the other end of the pub in half darkness and walked over to her. As he got closer, Sansa noticed he had pulled on a dark brown jacket over his shirt. Clearly, he was ready to go home.

 

“Isn’t someone coming to get you?” Sandor asked, and though his voice didn’t sound too concerned, his expression creased into a mild look of worry.

 

“No,” Sansa said quietly, but the truth was she hadn’t even bothered to call anyone. If she called Margaery, Margaery would tell Loras, who would tell Renly, who would tell his brother, Robert, who was Joffrey’s father and who would tell _her_ father, and she would be in trouble for sure. If she called Jeyne, Jeyne would tell Theon, who would tell Robb, who would tell Father, and she would still be in the same mess all over again. Arya didn’t have her license yet, and Jon, who was the most trustworthy of them all, was away at Blackcastle College, so really, Sansa had no one to call to come pick her up.

 

“Well, you can’t stay here all night,” Sandor told her, and he sounded annoyed. Great, she outstayed her welcome. If she had any money on her, she could call a cab, but there wasn’t anything in her pockets but a few crumbled bills. Sansa slid off the stool and, without saying anything, walked towards the door. She supposed she was going to have to walk home tonight, but the thought scared Sansa because she had never walked on the streets at night before. In a cardigan and a dress and sandals, no less.

 

“Where are you going?” Sandor called out after her, and he managed to catch up with her before she grabbed the door handle. Sansa paused with her hand on the door, turning around to look at him warily.

 

“Well, I don’t have a ride, I don’t have any money for a cab, so I’m going to have to walk,” she slowly explained to him.

 

His face twisted at that almost into a pained expression, and he ran his hand over his head. Sandor bit his lip, looked up at the ceiling, and swore under his breath.

 

“Okay, look, I can give you a ride,” Sandor offered, meeting her eyes again. Sansa remembered everything her mother and father ever told her about not going anywhere alone with strangers, but she felt in this particular situation she didn’t have much of a choice. Besides, he had been nice to her so far, and he had helped her with Joffrey. She figured if he was going to kidnap her and stuff her into a trunk, he would have done it by now. “Where do you live?” he asked.

 

Sansa hesitated, but it was only for a moment and then it passed. “Winterfell Avenue,” she told him, and Sandor nodded his head at that.

 

“I know where that is,” he said. Sandor walked away from her long enough to cut out the lights of the pub, and she walked outside when he did, watching as he shut the doors and locked them. He led her over to an older model car with black paint, and she ran her fingers along the frame. It was a nice car. There was an old quality feel to it, though she really knew nothing about cars and couldn’t name the year, make, and model of it. When he unlocked the doors, she opened the passenger side door and climbed in.

 

They both shut their doors, and suddenly Sansa realized she was alone in a car with a stranger—a man who was much older than her, even if he was kind of handsome. She sat as still as a bird in the seat as he backed the car out of the parking space and wheeled off into the street. Sandor drove a lot more responsibly than Joffrey, though, and she soon found herself relaxing despite the strange atmosphere.

 

“I didn’t catch your name,” he suddenly said, breaking the silence, and Sansa wondered if she should even tell him that. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to tell him her first name as long as she didn’t share her full name with him. He could look her up in the phonebook or something, and the thought bothered Sansa. Now that she was sober, there was something about his presence that was unsettling. Sansa couldn’t put her finger on it. When she was drunk, all she could think of was his looks, but alone with him, side by side in his car, she sensed something dangerous about him.

 

“Sansa,” she revealed, and when she looked over at him, the corner of Sandor’s mouth curled upward in a half smile.

 

“Yeah, your boyfriend,” he said. “He was screaming that across my pub.”

 

“Sorry about that,” she apologized, her voice lowering.

 

He snorted at her. “What for? You weren’t the one screaming.”

 

“Sorry,” Sansa said again, and she bit down on her lip.

 

“Again, with the apologies.”

 

Sansa opened her mouth and almost apologized again, and promptly shut it. She didn’t want to make him angry. They passed most of the ride in silence. He didn’t ask her anymore questions, and when they pulled onto her street, Sansa pointed at the big white house three doors down on the left. “That’s my house,” she told him, and then she realized with a sinking feeling in her stomach that without giving out her last name he already knew where she lived anyway.

 

Sandor didn’t pull into the driveway, but he pulled up to the curb and glanced over at her.

 

“Thank you,” Sansa said, giving him a small smile.

 

“Be careful out there,” Sandor advised her, and Sansa blinked at first, but then she nodded her head. She opened the door and exited his car, shutting it behind her. As she walked up the driveway, she heard him already driving off. Sansa kept walking without turning back to look. She looked down at her watch. It shone _2:34_ up at her in the dead of night, and Sansa looked back up again at the porch lights and took a deep breath.

 

Her parents were going to kill her.

 

 


	2. Take Jesus Off the Dashboard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** My geekery knows no bounds. Check the notes after the end of the chapter to see why. 8-)

_* * *_

 

“Where have you _been_?” Catelyn immediately demanded the moment Sansa walked through the front door. Sansa froze because her mother’s hard gaze was like iron, shackling her down in place.

 

Sansa glanced around the living room. Her whole family was waiting up for her. Her father, who had been pacing around the room, suddenly stopped when she walked through the front door. Ned looked torn between rushing towards her and hugging her to his chest like a child or yelling at her and giving her the scolding of her life, but he settled for clenching his fists at his sides and aiming the same unforgiving gaze in his grey eyes onto Sansa as her mother.

 

Arya was sitting up on the couch in her pajamas and taking a break from the movie on the television screen to watch Sansa’s discomfort, popping some more popcorn into her mouth from the bowl in her lap. Apparently, no one had been to bed or they had all been awoken in the middle of the night with their parents’ distress. Even Bran and Rickon were still awake, though they were in their pajamas as well. Bran was wordlessly playing a handheld video game on the couch next to Arya, and Rickon was half asleep as he ate a bowl of macaroni and cheese at the kitchen table, but he dropped his spoon to gaze blearily at the scene in the living room with half-lidded eyes.

 

“Ned called Robert, and Robert called Jaime. Did you know Jaime has been looking _all_ over the city for you the last two hours?” Catelyn continued angrily. Sansa did not know that, and it made her feel horrible. She looked down at the floor and tried to think up a valid excuse to explain what happened without having to mention the drinking bit.

 

“What I want to know,” Ned said slowly in his usual calm voice, “is why Joffrey got home safely, and Sansa did not.”

 

Sansa didn’t think that was very fair, considering she did get home safely. Luckily, her parents didn’t seem to notice who had dropped her off. They didn’t seem to be too concerned with how she got home, though, only with why she was so late getting back.

 

“Yes,” Catelyn agreed, “that is a _very_ good question.”

 

“Joffrey was supposed to drop you off,” Ned went on, pointing at Sansa. “What happened that he did not?”

 

Sansa quickly pieced together a story in her head. It was easier now that she was sober, so she did her best. “He was driving too fast, and it scared me, so I demanded he pull over the car and let me out. He said no, that he wouldn’t just drop me off on the side of the street. I . . . I snatched the wheel, and he got angry and pulled over to park, and that was when I got out of the car.”

 

Catelyn and Ned were each staring at Sansa with skeptical expressions. They looked like they weren’t sure if they were going to accept her story. It was better if she got in trouble than Joffrey, though, but Ned wasn’t convinced just yet.

 

“Why didn’t Joffrey call us?” he asked, and Sansa couldn’t lie to her father while looking at his face, so she dropped her gaze to the carpet.

 

“I don’t know . . . ” she answered him, trailing off unsure.

 

“She’s lying,” Arya said from the couch.

 

“Shut up!” Sansa snapped all of a sudden, lifting her eyes to glare at her sister. Arya grinned back at her and chewed on more popcorn.

 

Ned sighed in exasperation and shook his head. “Go to bed, all of you,” he said. He locked eyes with Sansa, though, and pointed his finger firmly at her. “We will discuss this further in the morning. Me, you, and your mother.” Ned turned away from Sansa to pick up the phone and make a call. Catelyn was already ushering Rickon and Bran to bed, though Bran wasn’t ready to go and put up a protest to play his game longer. Arya put down her popcorn bowl and slunk up the stairs to her room, casting her gaze back down at Sansa.

 

Sansa glared at her, wondering why Arya called her out like that. Normally, they were really close. When Arya saw Sansa’s look, she turned her head away and darted out of sight up the staircase.

 

“Yes, Jaime?” Ned said through the phone, and Sansa knew he was calling off the search. “No, no, everything is fine. Sansa just came back. She’s all right. No, not at all. You’ve been a big help. Thank you for looking. Thank Brienne for me, too . . . ”

 

Sansa tuned out the conversation and slowly ambled her way up the steps to her room. She closed her door behind her in the dark, sighing as she dropped her head against the door with a _thump_. She wasn’t looking forward to explaining it further to her parents in the morning, but she didn’t have much of a choice. Flicking on the light, Sansa turned around and immediately froze with a gasp. Her hand flew to her chest, and she glared at her sister, who had been sitting on her bed in the dark and waiting for her to come in the room. Arya grinned at her.

 

“Really, Arya?” Sansa asked. “You couldn’t knock like normal people?”

 

“I’m not normal people,” Arya argued back. With wide eyes, Arya passed her hand over her face. “I’m a _shadow_.”

 

Sansa rolled her eyes. “You’re an annoying little sister, that’s what you are,” Sansa said, heading over to her dresser and grabbing pajamas for bed. She was exhausted now that she thought about it, and she wanted to get some sleep before her parents woke her up early in the morning for their little heart to heart with her.

 

“Who was that man in the car?”

 

Sansa froze, having just shut the drawer to her dresser. “What?” she asked carefully, hoping maybe she misheard Arya or something.

 

“Who was that _man_ in the car,” Arya repeated. “The one who dropped you off. I saw him. Mum and Dad didn’t, but I did.”

 

“He’s . . . nobody,” Sansa tried to lie, but Arya wasn’t having any of it.

 

“Look, you can lie to Mum and Dad all you want, but you know you can’t lie to me,” Arya said. “I sniff through every lie. I’ve got the sensory perception of a wolf.”

 

Arya was right. Sansa turned around, staring at her sister across the distance. She made her way to the bed and plopped down beside Arya. With a sigh, Sansa decided she might as well share the truth with Arya. After all, she knew all about Arya’s secret boyfriend, Gendry, who Mum and Dad would pitch a fit over if they knew Arya was seeing him. He was four years older than Arya’s sixteen, a high school dropout, and a mechanic on top of that. It wasn’t exactly the aspiration they had for their daughter.

 

Sansa took her time to fill Arya in on everything that happened that night. When she was done, Arya ranted for a good fifteen minutes about all of the horrible things she would do to Joffrey the next time she saw him. Arya had never liked Joffrey, calling him a stupid bully and a liar from the beginning, but Sansa hadn’t seen through the stars in her eyes. Once Arya calmed down and stopped her ranting, she cast a sidelong glance at her sister.

 

“So,” she drawled out, “is this bartender your boyfriend now?”

 

Sansa’s eyes went wide. “Oh, god, _no_ ,” she said quickly. “I mean, he only gave me a ride home. I’m not seeing him.”

 

“Maybe you should,” Arya suggested with a shrug of her shoulders.

 

“He’s _old_ ,” Sansa said, but even that hadn’t mattered to her. She was just trying to argue with Arya to get her sister to drop it.

 

“Gendry’s old,” Arya said, tilting her head to the side. “Older men are fun. They know how to use their tongues.”

 

“ _Arya_!”

 

“What!” Arya exclaimed right back. “I meant for kissing. Get your mind out of the gutter, Sansa. _Really_.”

 

Sansa crossed her arms. “You and Gendry are different. He’s not that much older than you, and you met him when he was still in school. The two of you have been best friends forever.”

 

“Actually, we fought like cats and dogs,” Arya said. “You remember that time I dated that foreign exchange student, Jaqen? Gendry was so jealous he dated that flaming redhead, what was her name, Melly? Yeah, that was a total mess. Anyway, it wasn’t the perfect relationship, so quit trying to find one. They don’t exist.”

 

Sansa looked down at her lap, her hands fidgeting. Arya was right. Sansa spent most of her time chasing the idea of a love story that existed only in songs on the radio, and it really wasn’t healthy. Then again, she doubted pursuing an older man was much healthier than that. Sansa sighed deeply and dropped her head into her hands. “I don’t know what to do,” she said into her hands, her voice muffled.

 

“I know,” Arya said in a chipper voice, jumping off of the bed. “Tomorrow evening, we walk over to Gendry’s and catch a ride to this pub.”

 

Sansa’s eyes went wide again. “What?” she asked her sister, caught off guard by Arya’s proposal. “What for?”

 

“So you can _talk_ to him,” Arya said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “What else?”

 

“What if I’m grounded?”

 

“Mum and Dad won’t ground you,” Arya said matter-of-factly. “Mum was a crying train wreck around two last night before you came in the door. They’re too worried to ground you. They’ll give you a stern talk, shake their finger, and tell you never to do that again, and then you’ll be good to go. What do you say?” Arya was practically bouncing with excitement, but Sansa had no idea what would be so exciting about it for Arya.

 

Sansa had to sit there very still and think about it for a while. Once Arya started to get impatient for an answer, she sighed and said, “Oh, all right. I’ll go.”

 

Arya jumped, throwing her hands in the air. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “Oh, and next time when you get stranded and need a ride, just call Gendry. He’ll pick you up. You know he will.”

 

“I don’t have his number,” Sansa said.

 

“I’ll get it for you,” Arya told her. “Night, sis!” she called out then, heading for the door to Sansa’s room.

 

“Goodnight,” Sansa called back, and she changed into her pajamas for the night and crawled into bed, though she didn’t fall asleep immediately. Sansa was nervous, despite the fact that she wasn’t doing anything but lying in bed. She was worried about tomorrow. Most of all, facing her parents and finding out what they would say, but if she was honest with herself, she was nervous about going to Gendry’s and catching a ride to the pub again as well. Closing her eyes, she pushed the thoughts from her mind and tried to get some sleep.

 

Morning came and went, and the talk with her parents wasn’t as bad as Sansa thought it would be. Arya was right and Sansa didn’t get grounded because they didn’t think it was all her fault, so Ned and Catelyn resolved to have a talk with Robert and Cersei about Joffrey and Sansa instead of barraging Sansa about it. Sansa figured it was better than the alternative of them blaming it all on her. She attended lunch like normal and played the role of the good daughter until five o’clock rolled around and Arya came by to snatch her by the arm.

 

“Mum, Dad!” Arya called out. “We’re going to over Jeyne’s house! I’ll keep an eye on Sansa, don’t worry!”

 

“Be safe,” Ned called out, and though Catelyn protested at Sansa leaving the house again so soon, Sansa heard Ned calming his wife down and telling her it wasn’t that big of a deal. They were outside the front door before Sansa could hear the rest of the conversation, and she and Arya walked down the sidewalk together in the evening sun. It was summertime, so the weather was nice and warm, but a cool breeze blew through the air and stirred Sansa’s hair.

 

Eventually, she noticed Arya was wearing a dress. “Oh my god,” Sansa said, “is that a _dress_ on you?”

 

“Shut up,” Arya said calmly. “I can wear dresses.”

 

“Yes, but I didn’t know you did.”

 

“Special occasions only,” Arya confirmed.

 

“And what makes this such a special occasion?” Sansa asked her, raising her eyebrows.

 

“I get to meet your new boyfriend.”

 

“Arya, he is _not_ my boyfriend,” Sansa retorted, holding up her hand as if to tell Arya to stop it. It was starting to fluster her how her sister insisted on calling Sandor her boyfriend when she had only met him for one night and he offered her a ride home. “If you go around saying this stuff once we’re there, he’s going to think I’m crazy.”

 

“He’s a bartender,” Arya said flippantly. “He deals with crazy all the time.”

 

Sansa stopped on the sidewalk, and Arya stopped as well. “Arya, look, I’m not going if you act like this. I swear it. I don’t want to be embarrassed once I get there.”

 

Arya pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. Eventually, she gave in and sighed at Sansa. “All right, I’ll stop. When we get there. Until we get there, I’m going to mock you senselessly.”

 

Sansa thought she could deal with that. They continued walking again as the sun drew a little lower in the sky. Gendry’s house wasn’t that far. He lived over on Steel Street, which didn’t have the best housing but it wasn’t a bad place to live either. There was a white car out front, and Sansa could see his legs sticking out from underneath it. He was always working on a vehicle, Sansa thought. She and Arya made their way over to him, and Arya slapped her hand down on the hood to get his attention.

 

Gendry rolled out from under the car, squinting up at them. “Hey,” he said, grinning when he saw Arya. He quickly got up from the ground and brushed himself off. Gendry was wearing torn up jeans and a stained white tank top that really wasn’t that white anymore, and he was covered in streaks of black grease. His dark hair was in total disarray, sticking up in every direction. Sansa wondered when was the last time he combed it. Since the last time she had seen him, he had grown out a mustache and a goatee. Sansa wasn’t so sure she liked the look on him.

 

Gendry leaned over to hug Arya carefully, trying not to get grease on her, but Arya didn’t seem to mind anyway. She gave him a quick peck on the lips, and he pulled back to look down at her dress. “What are you all dressed up for?” he asked her, and Arya wrinkled her nose at him.

 

“Well, if you must know,” Arya said, “you and me are taking Sansa out to see her new boyfriend.”

 

Gendry’s eyes went up at this. “Are we?” he asked, looking between the two of them. “What happened to the old one?”

 

“She dumped him.”

 

“Well, about time,” Gendry said, glancing over at Sansa with approval written across his face. He separated himself from Arya to go put down his tools on the workbench. “Joffrey was a fucking prick.” He tore off his tank top and began to wipe his face with it. Meanwhile, Arya silently admired his physique from the car. “So, what happened? Did he finally snap?”

 

Though Sansa hadn’t officially broken up with Joffrey yet by telling him, it seemed it was commonly accepted that it was over. Instead of arguing with semantics, Sansa decided to answer his question. “He snapped a long time ago,” she said. “I just finally realized how crazy he is, I guess.”

 

“Well, you picked a new one up pretty quickly,” Gendry said. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

 

“He’s not really my boyfriend,” Sansa told him slowly. “Arya is just playing with me.”

 

“Oh,” Gendry said.

 

“He’s older,” Arya cut in, “so she thinks he won’t like her.”

 

Gendry shrugged at that. “I’m older. What’s that got to do with anything?”

 

“Yeah, Sansa and I were talking about it last night. She said you and me were best friends for years, so we don’t count. You remember that time I dated Jaqen while you were dating—”

 

“God, I _hated_ that prick,” Gendry snapped, cutting Arya off. He threw his tank top down on the workbench. “‘A man does this, a man says that,’” he mocked, throwing his hands up in the air near his chest. “Who the fuck taught him English? He couldn’t speak it worth a shit.”

 

Arya shrugged. “I thought it was hot.”

 

Gendry shot a look at her and pointed his finger. “I’m warning you. Don’t go there.”

 

Arya grinned back at him. “Okay, I won’t, but you need to get dressed so we can make it out of here on time. We’ve got some distance to cover.” Arya hurried over to Gendry’s side and slapped him hard on the butt before she rushed him towards the door of his house with her hands pressed against his back. “Go inside and get a shower real quick, and let’s go!” Arya demanded, giving him a push through the open door.

 

Sansa and Arya sat on the hood of the car while Gendry showered inside. When he came back out, he was all cleaned up and dressed nicely in clean jeans and a button-down plaid shirt, but his hair was still sticking up in every direction possible. Sansa was beginning to believe it just dried itself that way.

 

“Are we ready?” Gendry asked them, and Arya nodded, hopping off the edge of the car.

 

“Come on, Sansa!” Arya said, following Gendry as he led the way over to his working vehicle on the other side of the lawn.

 

Sansa took a deep breath, tried to still the quaking in her nerves, and pushed herself off of the car hood. If she admitted it to herself, she was scared to death of going back to the pub. Sandor was nice to her last night, but what if he didn’t ever expect to see her again? What if he wasn’t happy to see her again? What if he was pissed off that she came back after that whole fake identification card incident from last night?

 

Well, there was only one way to find out. Resolving herself to move forward, Sansa swallowed past her fear and followed Arya and Gendry to the vehicle across the lawn. She opened the door to the backseat and climbed inside, shutting the door with a resounding _thud_ behind her.

 

 _Here goes nothing_ , Sansa thought to herself with a deep sigh to calm her nerves, but really, it didn’t work, and her heart thudded mercilessly in her ribcage down every single street, around every single bend, and all the way to the pub.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I made an image set for this. Can't say I'm not proud of it.
> 
>  


	3. The Kindness of Strangers

_* * *_

 

As it got later into the evening, more people crowded into the pub. The pub wasn’t open that late on weekdays because of people’s daily work schedules, but the weekends were a different matter. They stayed open late on the weekends. Everybody wanted to drink on the weekends, and most of them wanted to get trashed out of their minds. There were regulars, new faces, out-of-towners, and more. Young people, old people, middle-aged people, beautiful people, ugly people. You named it, it was there. Somewhere in the background noise, Sandor heard a group of college students all raise their mugs at once, cheering loudly and clinking their glasses together in a toast.

 

One of the regulars sitting at the bar nearly dropped his face right into his latest draft, and Sandor quickly grabbed it to pull it back. He was trying to avoid a mess to clean up if he could help it, or having a patron get injured with broken glass because they broke it with their big heads. After all, the little man did have a big head. Because of Sandor’s quick thinking, the man’s forehead ended up hitting the counter instead of colliding with the glass mug. The guy groaned aloud from underneath a thick mop of blonde hair. “Ow,” came his muffled voice against the countertop.

 

“I think you’ve had enough,” Sandor told him, aggravation creeping up into his tone. This one had been getting on his nerves all evening, and he’d been here for three hours already. “Do you want me to call you a cab?”

 

The little man, whose name was Tyrion, raised his head and one of his hands, lifting a single finger into the air. “After the day I’ve had, I haven’t had enough until I see thirty naked women dancing in front of me with their glorious tits out on display.”

 

“Well, when you see them,” Sandor said, pouring out the used draft, “tell them to visit me next. In the meantime, I’m calling you a cab and cutting you off.”

 

“Noooo,” Tyrion bemoaned, putting his hands down flat against the countertop. He stared up at Sandor with a pained look in his eyes. “Don’t cut off my life supply. How cruel can you _be_?”

 

Sandor gave him a pointed look across the counter. “You’ll thank me in the morning,” he said with a tone of finality that left no room for argument. It was a tone he had to use often around here. This was his bar, his pub, and whatever he said were the rules. “Trust me,” Sandor added with a tight-lipped smile, though he doubted very much that the little man did. Tyrion frowned at him, groaned, and dropped his head back to the counter as Sandor went to call the man a cab. Sandor serviced other customers until the cab arrived outside the pub, which thankfully didn’t take long, and left the bar to Steffon while he helped the little drunken lecher out of his establishment and into the cool night air towards the cab that awaited him.

 

Tyrion put his hand up against the car door to turn back and look at Sandor. His eyes were bloodshot, and he almost fell over right there, but he caught himself and stood up straight again. However, his head fell backwards as he regarded the taller man next to him. “Are you the God of Tits and Wine?” Tyrion asked blearily, blinking open his large eyes to try and see better and then squinting them because he could not.

 

Sandor had had it. That was it. That was just it.

 

“God of Wine, yes,” he said with irritation, “of Tits? I wish.” He gave Tyrion one good shove, and the little man fell over into the cab. Sandor slammed the door shut behind him, and then he watched as the cab drove off into the night. Tyrion peeked up out of the back window, waving goodbye at him. Sandor grunted with frustration and turned his back to the road.

 

 _Alcohol_ , he thought. He needed alcohol to deal with this night. The buggering dwarf had gotten on his last nerves with his inane comments at the bar ever since the moment he arrived at Sandor’s pub. The thing was Sandor hadn’t had a drink in months, though. Ever since he got off probation the last time, he was trying his damnedest to stay away from the bottle and stay sober. He was at a record of three months so far thanks to Elder Brother from the monastery who helped out with the Alcoholics Anonymous program on Riverland Drive. Sandor went two, sometimes three, times a week. It kept his head clean and kept him sober.

 

Elder Brother had thought it was a bad idea for Sandor to continue running the pub given his problem and had advised towards selling it to someone else and getting into a different line of work, but Sandor insisted it was good for him. Being around alcohol all the time sort of desensitized Sandor to the temptation, and seeing what it did to people everyday made him realize he didn’t want that to be him. If he completely stayed away from alcohol and always avoided the sight of it, Sandor was afraid the moment he did see it again, he would cave in and lose his resolve and return right back to the bottle.

 

Sandor sighed deeply, ran his hand over his head, and resigned himself to going back inside and dealing with the crowd. He could get through this night without needing alcohol, he told himself. The night couldn’t possibly get any worse than it already was now. He strode back into his pub, got behind the counter, and did his damn job to the best of his ability. Sandor was actually enjoying himself not long after that, laughing along with some crazy shit Steffon and Allard were talking about, when he saw someone come up to the bar out of the corner of his eye. With a grin plastered across his face, Sandor turned to greet the new patron as he wiped down a glass in his hands. The grin promptly fell from his face into a look of dumbfounded shock.

 

Sitting there at the bar in the swivel stool just like the night before was the really tall and unnervingly cute redheaded girl he had given a ride to when her asshole boyfriend had abandoned her at Sandor’s bar and driven off like a madman into the night. Sandor was trying to piece together why the hell she was here again when she was clearly underage and this was an eighteen and up establishment — hadn’t he had this discussion with her last night regarding her fake ID? — until her nervous expression gave way to a little smile and she raised the fingers of one hand in a motionless wave and said one word, “Hi.”

 

“Hey,” Allard said beside Sandor with a sly grin on his face, giving the girl a once over with his eyes. “Is this your new lady friend, Sandor?” he asked. It was the wrong thing to say. Sandor cut his eyes at Allard, his face a still mask of fury, and slowly pointed to the other end of the bar.

 

“Get the fuck back to work,” Sandor told him.

 

Allard and Steffon both looked alarmed at Sandor’s change in demeanor, but he really could give two shits less what they thought about it. He wasn’t about to have them running around saying this was his lady when the girl was only seventeen. Sandor didn’t date anyone whose age began with the digit one. For a man with few rules in his life, that was one of them.

 

He turned back to look at Sansa—because he knew her name; he just didn’t want to use it. The more he referred to her as ‘girl’ in his head, the less likely she was to look available to him, and that was for the better. She looked really nervous, though, as if his language and sternness had worried her all over again. Sandor blinked, shaking his head.

 

“What are you doing here?” he asked her, and Sansa grinned warmly at him this time, and then she bit on her bottom lip. Sandor looked down at it, cursed himself inwardly once he realized he looked down at it, and returned his eyes back to her face. He really needed to get a grip on himself. She was just a girl.

 

“I just wanted to come by to . . . to talk to you,” she said, faltering with her words. “Ah, I thought, um, maybe we could be friends or something. You were really nice to me the other night, and that was, um, very kind of you. To do that. For me.”

 

Oh, bloody buggering hells. She had stars in her eyes. _I do one nice thing for her, and she acts like I saved her from some raging mob_ , Sandor thought. He put down the glass in his hands as well as the rag and leaned forward on the counter, trying to think of how to word his response. Sansa’s breath hitched when he leaned closer, and Sandor eyed her carefully. _Definitely_ , he thought. _Definite stars_. They were practically dancing in her big blue eyes.

 

Did he just think of her eyes?

 

Sandor shook his head. “Look,” he said, and he said it real slow so she would get the point. “I’m sure you’re a really nice girl, but you need to have friends your age, and I need to have my friends my age. Do you know what I mean?”

 

Sansa narrowed her eyes and glanced off to the side. “People my age are stupid,” she said, “and they kind of do really stupid things. I’m sort of tired of hanging around people like that. I thought, I dunno, maybe I could hang out with someone like you.” She was looking at him again now, not pushy but earnest, but all the same, Sandor had a feeling she had more on her mind than just friendship.

 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Sandor told her bluntly, shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head at her. “I’m not the person you think I am, girl.”

 

She frowned when he called her that, glancing down at her hands in her lap. “Well, if you were a bad person, you wouldn’t have done what you did for me last night, so I guess I don’t understand . . . ”

 

Sandor clenched his teeth tightly behind his closed lips. She wasn’t getting it, but he didn’t want to have to spell it out loud for her and be an asshole. Not after what he saw her go through last night with that prick boyfriend of hers. That little shit was an abuser if Sandor ever saw one, and he was betting that wasn’t the first time the boy had grabbed her like that. He tried to think of a way to spell it out for her kindly, and then it came to him.

 

“I’m thirty-three,” Sandor said, and then he gestured at her. “You’re seventeen. You go to school. I run a bar. What are we going to talk about?”

 

Sansa gave him a funny look like that was the dumbest question in the world. “The same things we would talk about with our other friends,” she answered him plainly. “People can’t have different interests and still be friends? That’s sort of a narrow view of the world.”

 

Sandor was taken aback. Was she calling him narrow? Of all the things people could call him, never in all his life had someone called him _narrow_. Sandor raised his hand and opened his mouth to say something, found nothing to say, and promptly closed his mouth as his hand dropped back down to the counter. Sansa smiled brightly at that like he had finally given her an answer at last, and she reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a little piece of paper and a pen and scribbled something down. Sandor’s gaze turned skeptical as he tried to get a glimpse of whatever it was she was writing, but her hair had fallen forward and made a curtain around her hands and the little piece of paper on the counter and he couldn’t see it.

 

When she was done jotting it down, she tucked the pen back into her pocket and looked up at him, smiling still. Sansa slid the piece of paper towards him with just three of her fingers. A sinking feeling developed at the bottom of Sandor’s stomach, and unbidden, his hand reached forward to lay itself on top of the piece of paper and slide it towards himself. He picked it up, his hand trembling a little bit, and held it up.

 

It was her fucking number. With her name signed all nice and neat right above it.

 

That was it. His nerves were shot. Without thinking about it, Sandor pocketed the piece of paper. Finally, he caved in—after three months of sobriety—and reached over to grab one of the bottles behind the bar with one hand and a shot glass with the other. He poured himself a shot, set down the bottle, tipped his head back and downed the shot. It burned going down his throat with that old familiar tingle of _home_ , and Sandor closed his eyes to savor the moment. When he opened his eyes again and lifted his head back up, he tapped the shot glass down on the counter in front of himself with a firm hand. Sansa was looking at him with her mouth half open, her pupils big and dark, and a little flush to her cheeks—and that was when it hit him. Three months. Down the drain.

 

“Fuck!” Sandor swore out loud, his whole head moving violently with the word, and he raised his hand to the bridge of his nose to pinch it. This was wonderful. This was great. No, really, this was just _perfect_. Everything he tried so hard to accomplish fucked, gone, down the drain, all because of one little innocent doe-eyed girl who had to walk into his bar with a dickhole abusive boyfriend and who was now looking at him like he was going to fix everything for her.

 

Sandor walked around the bar to the opposite side. “Steffon,” he called out, “watch the bar.” When he got to the other side, Sandor gently took Sansa by the arm, careful not to grab her too hard and hurt her, and led her out of the pub with him in long strides. Sansa seemed to tense up at this, and he wondered if finally she was afraid of him like she ought to be.

 

Once they walked past the doors and hit the cool night air, Sandor let go of her arm and turned around to face her. “Why are you _here_?” he asked her firmly. Sansa stared at him like she didn’t know what to say or that she had already said it and didn’t understand why she had to say it again.

 

“I just wanted to talk to you,” she said hesitantly, and Sandor saw how she lifted one of her hands to her arm to rub it—either in a nervous gesture or because she was cold. “To . . . to be friends with you. To thank you for last night . . . ”

 

“You thanked me for last night _last night_ ,” Sandor snapped, gesturing at her with his hand. Finally, he just lost it, and he started pacing the parking lot. “You know, I’ve been sober for three months until that shot in here,” Sandor said as he paced. “Three _fucking_ months!” He was just talking in general, not directly at her, but he was angry enough to kick the garbage can outside, knocking it over.

 

When he looked back at Sansa, she looked absolutely terrified. _Oh great_ , he thought. That was because of him. Hadn’t she been terrified enough with that little prick the other night? Now he had to go and scare her, too? Sandor stopped himself from doing anything else rash or stupid, bowed his head and briefly grabbed it with both of his hands. Eventually, he dropped his arms back to his side and looked up at her again.

 

“I’m sorry,” Sandor said slowly, a lot calmer now. He clapped one of his hands against his chest. “This is what I mean. You don’t know me. I’m just a stranger out here, outside a pub, scaring you half to death.” He was quiet for a moment before he said the next part. “You should go home.”

 

Sansa looked like she might cry, and then she hurried back to the doors of his pub and disappeared inside. She was probably going to get her friends, whoever had brought her here. It was for the best. Sandor felt like an asshole, but he wasn’t about to get entangled with a starry-eyed teenage girl. He had gotten himself into enough trouble as it was without somebody else to help him along with it. Besides, he was an asshole. At least she saw that now.

 

Sandor stayed outside for a minute to breathe in some fresh air. When he walked back inside the pub, Steffon was trying to calm the girl down over at the bar. She was crying for real now, and Sandor clenched his fists at his sides. Fucking hell, if she told one of them some lie . . .

 

“What’s going on?” Sandor asked, trying his best to sound professional, and when Steffon looked up, he had an expression of concern swept over his face.

 

“Uh, Sansa here, her ride just split on her,” Steffon said. “I tried helping her look around for them, but they’re not here and she left her phone in their car.”

 

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Sandor deadpanned, and he glanced over at Sansa but she wouldn’t look at him.

 

“Nope, man,” Steffon said. “It’s kind of brutal. Uh, I can give her a ride home if you and Allard got it?”

 

Sandor’s fists clenched tighter at his sides, and then suddenly they loosened up and his hands fell open. Fate was fucking with him. He just knew it. It was some kind of large neon sign blinking at him over his head, saying ‘ _HA HA_ ’ with a morbid sense of humor behind it.

 

Sandor shook his head. “No, I got this,” he said. “I know where she lives.”

 

Sansa slowly looked to her side at that, trying to see him out of the corner of her eyes without looking at him. Sandor crossed the distance and held out his hand to her. This was fate’s payback on him for being a dick to her. He had to play the role of the concerned stranger again, looking out for her safety. Only it wasn’t really a role and he didn’t have to play it. Sandor wouldn’t let a young girl wander the streets at night without protection. He wasn’t _that_ kind of a dick.

 

Her eyes stared unsurely at his hand for a while, and then very slowly she reached out to take it. He gently closed his fingers over hers, trying not to think about the fact that he was holding her hand. Sandor led her out of the pub and towards his car in the parking lot. He was going to hate himself later for it, but he even opened the door for her and closed it behind her. He got in the car next, starting the engine and pulling out of the parking space. Remembering the path from last night, he drove in that direction.

 

Sansa was silent the whole time, and Sandor didn’t think it was a good idea to open his big mouth, so he kept it shut as well. It was an awkward and uncomfortable silence, but he could live with it. It wouldn’t be the first time he was in a car with a woman like this. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sansa tugging on her dress, trying to pull it down closer to her knees. It must have raked up when she got in the car. Sandor averted his gaze. He wasn’t going to look. No, he definitely wasn’t going to look.

 

He pulled onto her street, seeing her big white house looming ahead on the left. She lived in a nice place. The girl had everything she could ever want at her fingertips, he bet, if her parents could afford a place like this. Why the hell was she looking for friends on the wrong side of town with the likes of him? Not that he believed that for a second, anyway. With the way she had looked at him in the bar, she had more than friendship on her mind. Then again, it wouldn’t be the first time a teenage girl rebelled against her parents. That made Sandor’s mouth twitch, and he brought his hand to his mouth to cover it up. _Go figure_ , he thought. He was the typical ‘bad boy’ figure to her, probably. He was tall, dark, scarred, and he ran a pub. She probably took one look at him and thought he was her ticket out of boredom.

 

Sandor parked the car on the curb at the house before her house. He didn’t want her parents coming out and seeing him. They would give him shit for having their daughter in his car, regardless of his intentions. Sansa hadn’t gotten out yet. Sandor looked over at her, and the tension in the air was so thick it could have been cut with a knife. He wondered why she was waiting to get out. She probably expected him to go back on what he said about her going home. _And staying there_ , he added silently in his head.

 

“Thank you,” she finally said in a real quiet voice without even looking at him. “For bringing me home.” Then, she pushed on the door and opened it and moved to get out of his car.

 

“Hey,” Sandor said all of a sudden, though he didn’t know why, and Sansa paused with one of her long legs still inside of the car and finally looked at him. Really looked at him. Sandor wondered why the hell he stopped her. He shouldn’t have stopped her. His gaze dropped from hers to the seat where she had been sitting across from him in his car, and then he looked ahead at the steering wheel, putting both of his hands on it. “Take care,” he told her, taking a brief moment to glance back at her. Sansa bit her lips together. Slowly, she nodded her head.

 

“Goodnight,” Sansa told him, and she removed her leg from his car and shut the door behind herself. Sandor watched the whole time as she walked towards her house until she disappeared beyond the threshold of its front door, closing it behind her. He blinked, wondering why he had watched her leave, and found his hands were shaking. Sandor gritted his teeth, calmly flexed his hands, and took the vehicle out of park. He pulled the car around to go back the way he came, and sped off down the street.

 

Sandor rolled the windows down to get some fresh air, the cool night sky feeling better than the stuffy air inside of his car. The whole drive back to his pub, he couldn’t get the damn girl out of his head. Well, he already had to talk to Elder Brother about the slip up with the alcohol. Maybe he could talk to him about this, too, though he wasn’t so sure that was a good idea. It was probably best he kept it to himself.

 

He took a deep breath, letting the back of his head fall against the headrest. What kind of mess had he gotten himself into now?

 

 


	4. Waiting on the Other Side

  _* * *  
_  


 

Sansa walked through the front door without a problem on this particular night. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, so her parents weren’t upset with her for coming in late like they were last night. Midnight was her curfew, and she was well on time. Nobody stopped her as she went up the stairs and straight to her room. Sansa fished out some sleeping clothes, went to take a shower, and returned back to her room to dry her hair. She was trying very hard not to think at all about what had happened tonight, and so far her mind was agreeing with her. Sansa blocked it all out, calmly drying her hair with the towel, and it wasn’t until she lay down in her bed and stared up at her ceiling in the dark that everything came back to her all at once.

 

He had been so _nice_ to her the other night. Joffrey could have hurt her worse than just snatching her arm and pushing her against the counter, or he could have taken her with him and gotten into a wreck on the highway in his drunkenness, and Sandor prevented both of those things from happening to her, and then he had given her a ride home when there was no one else she could have called upon who wouldn’t have ratted her out one way or another by opening their big mouths to the wrong people.

 

 _And then tonight_ , Sansa thought, and she tried not to get upset over the memory. He was a completely different person tonight. At first, she thought talking to him would be easy. It was for a little while, and then Sandor told her hanging out with her wasn’t a good idea and he called her a _girl_ like she was a child of nine or ten. He pointed out their age difference, and when she gave him her number—a suggestion from Arya while they were still in the car before they reached the pub—he just completely _snapped_ on her. He must have had some sort of drinking problem, Sansa thought, wiping away a newly fallen tear from the corner of her eye. Yes, he drove her home again, but only because he felt he had to, not because he wanted to—and that only made it worse. It made Sansa feel like she was some kind of child who had to be taken care of instead of a young woman who had been interested in a man.

 

She turned over in bed and laid the side of her head against the pillow, staring at the door to her room. Sansa always wanted her life to be more interesting than this—coming home on time, doing what was expected of her, following all of the rules until she could recite them forwards and backwards and in three different languages. Not that she knew any other languages, but that was aside from the point. She had wanted a different life than _this_. Laying in her bed at home at ten o’clock like a normal girl, staring at the door to her bedroom because she had nothing better to do with her time.

 

Eventually, she closed her eyes and drifted into an uneasy and shallow sleep. Sansa was awoken suddenly in the night with the sensation of a hand in her hair, and it caused her to jolt awake in fear—but it was only Arya, crouching at the side of Sansa’s bed and staring at her sister with concern on her face. It wasn’t a look Sansa saw on Arya’s face often. _Special occasions only_ , Sansa thought, remembering the words in Arya’s voice instead of her own. Arya had already cleaned up and put on her pajamas as well, and Sansa wondered what time it was and why Arya was in her room after abandoning her at the pub. Sansa wanted to be mad at her, though she found she was too tired to muster up the strength needed for it.

 

“Hey,” Arya said quietly, trying to look happy, but her face fell into sadness at the expression she saw on Sansa’s face. Arya took her hand away from Sansa’s hair. “What happened?”

 

Sansa felt her lip tremble as everything came rushing back to her, and she turned her face away from Arya to look at the ceiling. “He thinks I’m a _stupid_ girl,” Sansa revealed to her. “He’s not interested in me. I’m too _young_ for him. He got mad at me for giving him my number, and he’s probably thrown it away by now anyway.”

 

Arya’s mouth hung open for a little bit with not a reply to come out of it, and then she closed it and sighed—though not for herself, but for Sansa. Suddenly, she gently pushed at Sansa and scrambled to grab the sheets, tugging them upward. “Move over,” Arya said, and Sansa scooted over on the bed to allow Arya room to wiggle under the covers with her. Arya lay down next to her in the bed on her side, staring across the pillows at Sansa. She pursed her lips for a moment, looking thoughtful. “Maybe he’s just nervous,” Arya finally said, shrugging her free shoulder.

 

Sansa sighed, then. She shook her head. “No,” she said. “He’s not interested.”

 

“How do you know that?” Arya asked.

 

“Because,” Sansa said, shooting Arya a look, “he made it pretty clear.”

 

Arya narrowed her eyes, lifting her brow. “Did he say, ‘I’m not interested’?”

 

“Well, no . . . ”

 

“So, then,” Arya countered, “how do you know he’s not interested? What did he say, exactly?”

 

“He said, ‘ _I don’t think it’s a good idea_ ,’” Sansa told her, mimicking him in a deeper voice when she repeated his words.

 

“Ohhh . . . ”

 

“Oh, what?” Sansa asked, wary of the tone her sister used with that word.

 

Arya widened her eyes as she made a face that she said she knew what she was talking about on this subject. “If a man says ‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’” Arya told her, “that means he really wants to do it, but he’s hoping you’ll talk him out of it.”

 

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Sansa said. “If he wants to do it, then why would he want you to talk him out of it?”

 

“Hey, I’m just here to report the weather,” Arya said. “That doesn’t mean I can explain what makes it.”

 

“Well, if you’re going to report weather, then you should be able to _explain_ it.”

 

“Who are you,” Arya shot back, “the weatherwoman?”

 

Sansa sighed in exasperation. She wasn’t going to argue with her sister. She just wasn’t going to do it. It was too late, and she was too tired. Besides, she had another pressing matter on her mind for Arya. Sansa turned her head back to her sister and locked her eyes with Arya’s gaze. “Why did you and Gendry abandon me at the pub?”

 

Arya looked hurt by that. “We didn’t _abandon_ you,” she said. “We just thought you might want to be alone with him, you know, without us hovering over your shoulders like annoying grandparents who don’t know when to go away after they’ve already hugged you at a family reunion. We didn’t think anything would go wrong. We came back later looking for you, and he said you called a cab and went home.”

 

Sansa’s brow creased in confusion as she stared at her sister. “He said I called a cab and went home?”

 

“Yes,” Arya told her with a firm voice, and she looked proud of herself. “I asked him myself.”

 

“I didn’t call a cab,” Sansa said slowly, feeling even more confused about it. “He gave me a ride home. I mean, he could have called a cab. They call cabs for people at pubs all of the time, but he didn’t call anybody. He walked me out to his car and gave me another ride home.”

 

Arya’s eyes opened wider once she heard that out of Sansa’s mouth. “He did _what_?”

 

“He gave me another ride home,” Sansa repeated, though she wasn’t sure why Arya needed to hear it twice in a row.

 

“So, he’s given you two rides home now?”

 

“Yes,” Sansa said, even more confused, “but what’s that got to do with anything?”

 

Arya whistled low. “He wants you.”

 

Sansa made a face. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Arya. He made it pretty clear that—”

 

“‘He made it pretty clear,’” Arya mocked, changing the sound of her voice. “No, _you_ don’t be ridiculous,” she threw back at Sansa. “Men can’t be judged on their words, only on their actions. I don’t care if he’s screaming, ‘Oh, get away from me! Get away from me! Get _away_ from me!’ If he’s holding your hand, he doesn’t want to get away from you. Do you see what I’m saying?”

 

Sansa opened her mouth, and then closed it because she was unsure if she even understood whatever it was that Arya was saying. Better yet, since when did Arya become an expert on men? She was supposed to be the younger and inexperienced sister, while Sansa was supposed to be the older and more knowledgeable one, and yet here was Arya schooling Sansa on the ways of men—or whatever it was called. Sansa was also beginning to realize just how sleepy she was feeling, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to stay up talking any longer.

 

“I guess,” she agreed, hoping that was enough to end the barrage from Arya’s side of things. The last thing she needed was Arya giving her headache this late with her ranting that could go on forever. Sometimes Arya just didn’t know when to stop.

 

“Give it a week,” Arya said, looking at her sister across the pillow. “If he doesn’t call you back by the end of the week, then I’ll . . . I’ll . . . bake you a cake or something.”

 

“You can’t bake,” Sansa said, looking skeptical of the offer.

 

“Hot Pie can,” Arya said with a grin.

 

“Why don’t you just call him by his real name, Arya?”

 

Arya shrugged, bunching up the pillow with her motion. “I like calling him Hot Pie. I don’t see what the big deal is. Why are you always so negative?”

 

Sansa sighed again. “I love you, Arya, but goodnight.” Sansa turned over onto her side away from Arya, tucked both of her hands under the pillow, and closed her eyes. Sansa felt Arya snuggle up against her back, throw her arm around Sansa’s waist, and press her face into the crook near Sansa’s neck. Arya sighed contentedly as they lay there together, and Sansa found herself snuggling backwards into the embrace as well.

 

“Goodnight, sissy,” Arya said against her back, and shortly after Sansa took a deep breath, she found herself drifting off to sleep.

 

The next few days weren’t too bad. Arya spent her time trying to cheer Sansa up with each day that passed with no phone call. Sansa was convinced he threw the paper away probably as soon as he got back to the pub. He might have even thrown it out the window while he was driving back. Arya said it was ‘bullshit,’ and that he had kept it in his pocket, and if anything, probably accidentally washed it. Though Arya said maybe not, because men never washed their jackets. Sansa was really beginning to wonder where exactly Arya got all of this knowledge regarding men from and if it was even knowledge at all or just her own inane ramblings of what men were supposed to be like according to her view of the world. Sansa thought it was probably the latter.

 

Halfway through the week, a knock came at the door and Sansa went to answer it. Standing there in the doorway to their home was Robert Baratheon and Cersei Lannister, the mayor of Kingsland and his wife. Sansa’s eyes went wide at the sight of them. She hadn’t seen or heard from Joffrey since that first night at the pub, which was odd because usually he couldn’t stop barraging her with calls, texts, or his presence, but now with his parents standing in her doorway, Sansa was beginning to wonder if it really was truly and goodly over with Joffrey Baratheon.

 

Even though they were the mayor and the mayor’s wife of Kingsland, Sansa knew them better as Joffrey’s parents. While that title didn’t make them any less imposing, there was still a friendly quality to at least one of them. Sansa had always liked Robert Baratheon, even if he was a little on the drunken side sometimes and really boisterous. Robert was a very big and very round man with short cropped dark brown hair that was peppered with gray. He had a neatly trimmed mustache and beard, and he wore a grey suit and blue tie. He grinned at her immediately and held out his arms. “Come on, Sansa,” he said gruffly, “give us a hug!”

 

Sansa tried to smile at him, but it was a weak smile, and she reached forward to wrap her arms around him for a hug. Robert returned it with strong arms, and when she pulled away and looked over at his wife, Cersei Lannister had an expression of snobbish disregard on her face for Sansa. The woman was beautiful, if it weren’t for her constant scowling, and she wore her golden hair up in a tight French bun on her head. She was dressed in a navy blue pant suit, which matched her husband’s tie, and her green eyes were cool as they regarded Sansa.

 

“Where’s your father, girl?” Robert asked her, and Sansa looked over her shoulder into the house to call out for her dad, but Ned was already walking towards the door from the kitchen as if he expected the visit. Ned grinned widely at the sight of Robert, and Robert laughed out loud at the sight of Ned. Sansa moved out of the way, and the two men embraced each other like old friends, which they had been for a very long time. They grew up on the same street together and had been best friends for as long as Sansa could remember—even before she was born, her father always told her.

 

“Damn it, Ned,” Robert said, taking her father by the shoulders and walking him into the house, “let’s you and me grab ourselves a beer and sit down on the patio, hey? Let the women discuss this nonsense . . . ” Robert let out a rowdy laugh as he clapped Ned on the back and drew him away from Sansa, leaving her alone at the door with Cersei.

 

Sansa slowly turned towards Cersei, and the woman cut her cold eyes at Sansa. “Where’s your mother?” she asked in her usual curt manner, and Sansa swallowed past a catch in her throat and looked around the immediate vicinity for her mother, but she didn’t see her.

 

Sansa turned back to Cersei, trying to smile at the older woman. “Please, come in, and have a seat on the couch,” Sansa told her politely. “I will go see if I can find her.” Cersei walked into the house with that invitation, and Sansa closed the door behind her. As Cersei walked over to the couch to inspect it before sitting down, Sansa hurried up the stairs and stopped halfway up them as she saw her mother coming down them.

 

“Mum,” Sansa said quickly, “Mrs. Cersei is here with Mayor Baratheon.”

 

Catelyn continued descending the steps without pausing to stop. “Yes,” she replied without looking surprised to hear that bit of news, “I invited them over today so we could all discuss something together, but I heard Robert running off with Ned to the patio, so I suppose it’s just you and me and Mrs. Cersei.” Catelyn gave Sansa a pointed look at that, and Sansa joined her mother’s side down the staircase to the living room below.

 

Cersei was sitting in the middle of the couch, and Sansa took the far side of the couch while her mother sat herself down in the recliner across from them. Catelyn smiled warmly at Cersei, despite the colder one she received in return, and said, “I’m so glad you could join us today, Cersei.”

 

“It’s my pleasure,” Cersei responded, though she sounded anything but pleased by it. “Well, I think we ought to get right down to business.” Cersei turned her head to look directly at Sansa, which took Sansa by surprise. “We don’t believe it is a good idea for you and Joffrey to continue seeing each other. We all believe it is in Joffrey’s best interests as well as yours that the two of you end this little relationship and move onto more suitable ones.”

 

Sansa was taken aback by that, though not in a bad way. In fact, she was absolutely ecstatic to hear that the relationship was over without her having to talk to Joffrey about it. She wanted to grin, but she knew that was a bad idea, so she settled for schooling her face into disappointment as she looked between Catelyn and Cersei. “Is this true, mother?” Sansa asked warily, looking at Catelyn with the saddest expression she could muster up on the spot.

 

“Yes,” Catelyn said carefully. “We all do believe it is in your best interests as well as Joffrey’s that the two of you no longer see each other.”

 

Sansa took a deep breath and slowly exhaled it, looking down at her folded hands in her lap. “Did I do something wrong?” she asked, playing along with the game of being the injured girlfriend.

 

“No, no, no, sweetheart,” Catelyn told her. “It’s not your fault. It’s not Joffrey’s fault. We just don’t think the two of you ought to be in a relationship with each other. When the two of you spend time together and then me and your father see how you are afterwards and Cersei and Robert see how Joffrey is afterwards, we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not a healthy relationship—but it’s nobody’s fault. The two of you just affect each other negatively, and we thought it best to intervene before things got out of hand.”

 

“Yes,” Cersei agreed dryly, “anymore than they already have.”

 

Sansa slowly lifted up her head, looking between Catelyn and Cersei again. “Is it all right if I go to my room?” Sansa asked, and Catelyn nodded her head in a very sympathetic and understanding way that only a mother could give to her daughter, which gave Sansa leave to get up from the couch and slowly trudge her way up the stairs to her room.

 

Once she closed the door behind herself, Sansa jumped up in the air once, her arms flailing happily, as she mouthed ‘yes’ instead of screaming it so nobody would hear her. She couldn’t remember when the last time was that she was this _happy_. It was so perfect. She didn’t have to see him anymore. She didn’t even have to say goodbye to him. Sansa could just get on with her life and pretend like Joffrey never existed in the first place, and that was just the icing on the cake for her.

 

She was so happy at having finally gotten rid of Joffrey that the rest of the week just flew by in a breeze. She invited Margaery over to hang out with her and Arya, and the three of them were standing in the living room playing bowling on the Wii—Margaery and Arya getting very competitive with each other with their scores constantly tying and it driving them both bonkers—when suddenly, after the roar of the crowd on the game died down after Margaery struck down all of her pins for a strike, there came a familiar jingle from Sansa’s room through the ajar bedroom door.

 

Sansa and Arya both slowly turned to look at each other, and Sansa’s eyes went wide at the same time as Arya’s widened, and then the two of them dashed in a maddening sprint up the staircase with Margaery calling from below, “What’s going on? Where are you going!”

 

Sansa stumbled into her room with Arya bursting in not long after her. She looked around frantically for her phone until she spotted it on top of the dresser. Sansa ran over to the dresser, snatched up her phone, and stared down at the number on the screen as her phone continued to ring in her hand.

 

“Who is it?” Arya demanded, holding her hands in front of herself and clenching her fingers into her palms. “Oh my god, who _is_ it?”

 

Sansa’s hands were trembling. “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know this number. It’s not in my phone . . . ”

 

“Is it local?” Arya persisted, sounding more unnerved than Sansa.

 

“Yes,” Sansa answered in a very small voice.

 

“Well, pick it _up_!” Arya said as she flailed her arms.

 

Sansa took a deep breath, swiped her thumb over the ‘accept call’ button on her screen, and brought the phone to her ear.

 

“ . . . Hello?”

 

 


	5. No More Skipping Rope

  _* * *  
_  


 

When Sandor got home from closing up the pub the night he drove Sansa Stark home for the second time in a row, he kicked the front door of his apartment shut and walked straight up to the kitchen counter. He fished through his pockets for his keys, slapping them down on the counter, and then pulled out his wallet, tossing that down right beside his keys, and then he checked the rest of his pockets for any personal items he needed to remove—and that was when his hand closed around the little piece of paper in his jacket pocket from the pub. It was the same piece of paper containing Sansa’s phone number scribbled down in her neat and elegant handwriting, and he never even remembered putting it into his pocket.

 

He froze all of a sudden with his hand still in his jacket pocket, wondering without even looking at it if he should just immediately throw it away into the trash bin near his feet beside the counter. It was a tempting thought. Sandor imagined pulling his hand out of his pocket and dropping it straight into the trash, letting it flutter downwards until it found the bottom on its own, but his hand never left his pocket as he thought this. Sandor raised his eyes back to the counter to his keys and wallet, staring at them in silent contemplation. His thoughts were completely blank, and his mind gave him neither a yes or no answer to his dilemma.

 

His hand finally left his pocket, and Sandor glanced down at the paper between his fingers. He stared at it for what felt like an eternity, and without a single thought as to why he did it, he slapped the paper down on the counter right next to his keys and wallet and walked back to the front door to lock it for the night, and then he headed to bed.

 

When Sandor woke up in the morning, he got ready for his day as usual. As he went to grab his keys and wallet, his eyes caught sight of the little piece of paper on the counter, and he froze as he stared at it yet again. Sandor thought once more of throwing it away, the same way he thought about it the night before, but for some reason, he turned away from the piece of paper on his kitchen counter and left his apartment for the day. He came back later that night, and repeated the cycle all over again. This went on for a couple of days. Every day when he woke up, Sandor froze the sight of the paper and thought about throwing it away, but he never did, and every night when he came home, he thought about it again, but he never did it.

 

Wednesday rolled around the corner, and it was time for one of Sandor’s weekly visits to the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings on Riverland Drive. He had missed the one he usually caught on Sunday because there had been so much going on that it slipped his mind, and that wasn’t good. Sandor already had one slip up with alcohol, and what was to stop him from having another if he didn’t stick with the program?

 

Knowing he needed some time off from work to clear his head—and also, if he admitted it to himself, to avoid the possibility of seeing Sansa at his pub again—he went through some applicants and hired a new girl at the pub. Her name was Asha Greyjoy, and she was tattooed up to the max, but she could make a mean drink in two seconds flat and she was perfect for the job, so Sandor hired her. Sandor then left the pub in Steffon’s hands for the next few days because Steffon was the more responsible one out of him and his brother, and Sandor wasn’t about to trust the pub to Allard’s judgment, even if he was the older one.

 

Sandor showed up early for the meeting on purpose to get some time to talk with Elder Brother in private, and the two of them went to Elder Brother’s office alone. Sandor sat down in the guest chair across from the desk, fidgeting and nervous as all hell, as Elder Brother shut the door to his office. Sandor’s leg was practically jumping up and down as he repeatedly tapped his heel against the carpet below his foot, and he was chewing on his thumbnail as he waited for Elder Brother to take a seat.

 

When Elder Brother walked over to his desk and sat down across from Sandor, the older man’s stern but kindly gaze met Sandor’s across the desk and bored into Sandor’s skull with an intensity that made him even more fidgety. Elder Brother calmly asked Sandor to explain what had happened, and Sandor fabricated a story about the other patrons having gotten on his nerves and causing him to slip up with the alcohol, completely leaving out any mention of the seventeen-year-old girl, but Elder Brother saw through the façade and said, “You’re not telling me everything, Sandor. I can’t help you if you don’t start by telling me the truth.”

 

Suddenly, Sandor’s leg stopped fidgeting. He looked down at his lap, took a deep breath, and raised his eyes to Elder Brother again. This time he told the story from the beginning, starting with the night when he intervened between Sansa and her dick of a boyfriend, and then he told Elder Brother about the second night when she came by again and tried to say she wanted to be his friend and, when she gave him her number, how he grabbed the bottle and shot glass and downed the liquor right then and there. Sandor wasn’t proud of saying it out loud, so he averted his gaze from Elder Brother as he told him that last bit.

 

For a while, Elder Brother was quiet at his desk. He seemed to be contemplating something, and then he asked Sandor, “So, what do you think in that moment made you _need_ the alcohol?”

 

“The girl,” Sandor said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “The way she was looking at me, like she wanted me, and her persistence, and she’s too young, and I just, uh . . . I needed the alcohol.”

 

Elder Brother was quiet again, staring with deliberation at Sandor. “Tell me once more,” he said very slowly, “what did the girl offer to you? In her own personal choice of words, what did she say she wanted from you?”

 

Sandor narrowed his eyes at the question, not understanding the purpose behind it. “She, uh, she said she wanted to be friends,” Sandor answered, but then he quickly added, “but I could tell in her eyes—”

 

“I’m not concerned with her eyes,” Elder Brother said suddenly, cutting Sandor off. “I’m not concerned with her eyes. I’m not concerned with her body. I’m not concerned with anything about her appearance at all. I want _you_ ,” and here, Elder Brother looked pointedly at Sandor, “to tell me what she _offered_ to you.”

 

Sandor was quiet for a moment, biting hard on the inside of his cheek. “Friendship,” he finally said between clenched teeth.

 

“So,” Elder Brother continued, “you’re telling me that a young lady came to you after you helped her out of the grasp of an abusive boyfriend and she offered to you _friendship_ , a meaningful and platonic companionship of the purest form between two people—not her body, not her bed, not a sexual favor, but _friendship_ , and that drove you to the bottle again?”

 

Sandor’s teeth clenched together even more tightly than before. “What are you saying?”

 

Elder Brother leaned forward on his desk, folding his hands together. “How often do young ladies come into your bar, approach a man, and offer to him her body and her bed?”

 

“All the time,” Sandor said.

 

“And if this young lady had come into your bar again after you had helped her with her abusive boyfriend and propositioned you for sex, what would you have done?”

 

“I would have told her no,” Sandor answered him without hesitation.

 

Elder Brother raised his brow. “And would you have stressed over it this much, Sandor?”

 

Sandor felt his mouth open, but no words came out of it. He closed it after a short period of silence, and then he found himself shaking his head. “No,” he simply said, finally seeing where this was going. “I would have told her no and just walked away from it. Whatever, you know. It doesn’t mean anything.”

 

“Precisely,” Elder Brother said, leaning back in his seat again. “Sex doesn’t mean anything to you, Sandor. Sex, by itself, is meaningless. You have no reaction to it. You say she wanted you in a sexual way and that was what bothered you, but it’s not. What bothered you is what she _offered_ to you. Friendship. Companionship. Connection. Trust. These are the things that bother you, Sandor. These are the things that she tried to offer to you. These are the things that drove you back to the bottle. Not sex, not a pretty face, but your inability to allow people to get close to you.”

 

Sandor rolled his head back, and then he leaned forward and dropped it into his hands. He gripped the sides of his head with clutching fingers, grasping too tight. Right now, he really wanted another drink—another _fucking_ drink—because Elder Brother was right, because Elder Brother was _always_ right, and he didn’t know how the hell to answer the man after that.

 

Elder Brother allowed Sandor his moment in silence, waiting patiently for Sandor to be ready for their conversation again. When Sandor took a deep breath and raised his head once more, he looked across the desk at Elder Brother with a pained expression on his face. “So, what are you saying?” Sandor asked him. “Are you saying I should make friends with this seventeen-year-old girl?” There was a sardonic hint to the tone of his voice.

 

“I’m not saying that,” Elder Brother replied carefully, “but I am saying her appearance in your life at this moment is a very crucial insight into God’s will for your recovery and well-being. Your slip up with the alcohol is your reluctance to face up to this fact. You still want to refuse the one thing that would bring an improvement into your life and enlighten your soul above the earthly and carnal desires of the world into a purer form of existence. If you ever hope to overcome this problem, this addiction, this _need_ , then you must take that necessary step forward into a world you are wholly afraid of and unfamiliar with. You need to let go of your fear, Sandor, or it will swallow you whole down every bottle you see.”

 

Sandor sat there in silence for a long time, soaking it all in until he suddenly felt a lot calmer than he had this whole week. He flexed his hands against the chair’s armrests, and then he ran one of his hands over his head as he looked over the desk at Elder Brother. “So, this is your advice?” he asked.

 

“This is my advice,” Elder Brother concurred, nodding his head.

 

It made a lot of sense, Sandor thought. What did he do, anyway, except for go to work, go home, go grocery shopping, go running, or go to the gym? When he did ever hang out with people except for at work, and how did that count if he never bothered to get to know them outside of work? Sandor didn’t have friends beyond the casual type, and even those were shallow imitations of friendship at the very best. He didn’t even have a roommate. He’d probably kill them if he did. Not for real, obviously, but fuck, Sandor couldn’t deal with people’s shit. He went home to _escape_ from people, and if that didn’t say everything there was to say about his character, then what did?

 

After their private meeting, he attended the group meeting with a clearer head, and then he went home and kicked the door shut as usual and walked up to the counter to put down his keys and wallet. When he looked down at the little piece of paper still sitting there, untouched ever since he put it there over the weekend, he thought back once more to Elder Brother’s words. _You need to let go of your fear, Sandor, or it will swallow you whole down every bottle you see_. Sandor blinked away the thought, shaking his head, and walked away from the piece of paper on his counter.

 

He stopped by the pub two days later to see how things were going with him gone. Sandor didn’t go inside, but stayed outside and leaned on the hood of his car to watch the patrons and the hustle and bustle of people to and fro, the laughing faces of Steffon, Allard, and Asha as they serviced the customers and enjoyed every moment of it. He watched as the three of them shared a moment to high five each other—for what, he had no idea—but then Allard reluctantly slapped some bills down into Asha’s hand despite the wrinkled smile on his face, and all Sandor could guess was that Allard had lost a bet to Steffon and Asha.

 

Sandor left the pub after that and drove back home again. It was the evening of a Friday night, and here he was, sitting at home. Doing absolutely nothing. When he got up to go to the sink and fix a glass of water, he turned around and leaned on the counter to drink it and his gaze caught itself on the little piece of paper just lying on his counter yet again. Sandor stared at it, lowering the glass from his lips. He wasn’t sure what possessed him, but he put down the glass and walked over to the counter, picked up the piece of paper, picked up his phone, and tried the number. He half expected to hear an automated voice say ‘ _this number has been disconnected_ ’ than to go through to something on the other end.

 

When the phone actually began to ring, Sandor inexplicably thought this was a bad idea. Not just a bad idea, but a horrible fucking idea, but the phone was already ringing and he wasn’t going to hang it up in the middle of it ringing because if the number worked and it was hers, then she was just going to call him back and that would have been worse. The phone rang a few times, and Sandor thought nobody was going to answer, and then he thought about hanging up until he heard the familiar click of the transition from ringing to somebody picking up on the other side.

 

“ . . . Hello?” came her hesitant voice through the line, and Sandor recognized it immediately as the same girl. He then realized she probably had no idea who was even calling her because she certainly didn’t have his number.

 

“Hey,” he said, and she was deathly silent at first. Sandor was about to open his mouth to say something else when she finally answered him.

 

“Hey,” she said right back, though she still sounded very hesitant. Sandor couldn’t blame her, though, not after how he had acted that last night she saw him. He doubted this was even going to work. Why the hell was he calling a seventeen-year-old girl, anyway? Didn’t Elder Brother say that wasn’t what he meant by it, and here was Sandor, taking him literally?

 

Sandor realized he had been quiet for too long. “So,” he said, “does that offer still stand?”

 

She was quiet again. “What . . . offer . . . ?”

 

“Friends,” he said. “You said you wanted to be friends.”

 

He heard what sounded like a gasp. “Oh,” Sansa suddenly said, “that.”

 

“Yes, that.”

 

“Why?” she asked him slowly, sounding confused. “You said you didn’t think it was a good idea . . . ”

 

Well, shit, if she questioned him about it, then he was going to back out of this real fast. “Look, it’s cool if not—”

 

“No, no, _no_ ,” she said quickly, cutting him off. “No, that’s not what I meant. Um, sure, yeah. Definitely. Yes.” Sansa was quiet for a moment on the other end of the line. “Yes,” she repeated yet again.

 

Sandor was really beginning to doubt the sensibility of his actions, but he had already crossed the line the moment he picked up his phone and there was no going back now. Well, he could, but did he want to? Part of him did want to backtrack on all of it and put the phone down and just go to bed and go back to his normal life, but another part of him seemed to think this was completely harmless and it pushed him forward to say more.

 

“When are you free?” he asked her, trying not to think of how that sounded like a line said before a date, and he was hoping she didn’t think of it that way either. This wasn’t a date. This definitely wasn’t a date.

 

“Um, tonight,” she said. “I’m free by eight . . . ”

 

“Eight thirty,” Sandor told her, and then he paused for a moment. “I’ll be at the corner of your street,” he added. Sandor wasn’t about to park right in front of her house. That was just stupid, even he knew that.

 

He heard what sounded suspiciously like a deep breath being taken. “Okay,” Sansa answered him, almost in a way that seemed a little breathless.

 

Before he lingered any longer on the phone, Sandor immediately pulled it away and hung up the call. He placed the phone down on the counter, and once more he wondered if this was really such a good idea because it didn’t seem like such a good idea. He bowed his head in his hands, took a deep breath himself, and suddenly felt a lot calmer just from the simple motion of it.

 

Sandor left the kitchen to take a shower, changed his clothes, and then slipped on his jacket. Even though it was summer, it got chilly during the nights. He scooped up his keys, wallet, and phone and pocketed all three of them.

 

He stepped out of the front door of his apartment, shutting it behind him.

 

 


	6. Maybe There’s a Shark in the Water

  _* * *  
_  


 

As the phone call hung up and Sansa slowly lowered it from her ear, a sudden voice broke her from her reverie of speechlessness.

 

“Who was that?” Margaery asked very carefully from the doorway of her room, and when Sansa looked over at the other girl, Margaery was eyeing both her and Arya with a calculating expression on her face. Normally, Margaery was a good friend, but she was also very nosey. Margaery began to cross her arms over her chest as she stared at them, and Sansa realized she had to tell her something.

 

“It’s nobody,” Sansa told her quickly, letting out a little nervous laugh. “It’s nothing.”

 

Margaery’s expression turned somewhat shrewd as a crooked smile appeared on her face, and she raised her eyebrows at Sansa’s answer. “‘I’m free by eight’ is nothing?” Margaery asked her, and Sansa cursed herself inwardly. Sansa’s eyes then went wide at her own thoughts. Wait, since when did she curse, even in her thoughts? She _never_ cursed. Margaery, however, took the widening of Sansa’s eyes in a completely different manner. “You’re hiding something,” Margaery said, and that was when Arya decided to butt in.

 

“Sansa has a new boyfriend,” Arya said, and Sansa whipped her head at Arya with an alarming look in her eyes, but Arya wasn’t even looking at her. She was looking at Margaery, and if she said another word, she was going to ruin _everything_.

 

“Oh?” Margaery asked, uncrossing her arms. She was even more interested now. “What’s this boyfriend’s name?”

 

“ . . . Doug,” Arya said all of a sudden, and she turned her face to Sansa and lifted her eyebrows to a crazily high degree as if to say _I have no idea where that came from_ , but then she had a look on her face that pleaded Sansa to go along with it. Arya knew as well as Sansa that Margaery had a big mouth. Not only that, but Margaery told her brother everything, and her brother had recently become a police officer. He was still in rookie status, but that didn’t mean anything. Loras Tyrell was eager to prove himself, and sometimes they thought Margaery passed along information to him about people she knew to make him look better to his superiors. Loras Tyrell had been trying to get one up on the renowned Jaime Lannister ever since he joined the academy with the intentions of becoming the next best officer in the city, and Margaery had to have been helping him along with that.

 

Once they convinced Margaery that Sansa was seeing a boy from school named Doug, Margaery dropped the questionnaire. It wasn’t too long before Margaery left the Stark residence, and she wished them both a goodnight and aimed a sly smile towards Sansa before she left. “Have fun tonight, Sansa,” Margaery told her, and then she walked out to her car and drove off from their house.

 

Arya helped Sansa get ready for the night, and while Sansa insisted on wearing something simple, Arya kept saying, “No, no, no, dress up!” Arya tore through Sansa’s closet, making a mess, until Sansa snapped on Arya and told her absolutely _no_ dresses. She was going to wear jeans and a t-shirt tonight. Sandor had said he wanted to be friends. He didn’t say this was a date, and Sansa didn’t want to feel like a fool for overdressing.

 

“I’ve felt like a fool around him enough times already,” Sansa bemoaned, and Arya didn’t argue with that. When Sansa settled on which pair of jeans and which t-shirt, she put them on and brushed her hair while looking at her reflection through the floor length mirror against her closet door. She pinned the top layer of her hair up with a butterfly decorated clip, making a little crown on the top of her head with her auburn hair. She chose a simple navy blue top, dark blue jeans, and trainers. “There,” Sansa said, looking at her reflection. “I look normal.”

 

Arya turned to her side in the mirror behind Sansa and pressed upward at her own boobs. “You should lift these puppies up,” she said.

 

“ _Arya_!”

 

“God, you’re so sensitive,” Arya told her, rolling her eyes.

 

Sansa sighed in exasperation at her sister. “I’m not trying to _seduce_ him,” she said.

 

“I would,” Arya shot back, and then her eyes widened. “I mean, _not_ him. Ew, no, not _him_. Oh, gross—” Arya coughed, making a noise like she was going to throw up right onto Sansa’s floor, and Sansa looked at her with alarm. “Oh my god, get it out of my head!” Arya hollered, falling to the floor.

 

Sansa put her hands on her hips. “Stop being a drama queen,” she said. “I know you’re faking it.”

 

Arya stopped all of a sudden, rolled over onto her side, and propped her head up on her arm. “You know me too well,” Arya answered her calmly.

 

“You’re my _sister_ ,” Sansa told her. “I’m supposed to know you too well.” When Sansa looked down at the watch on her wrist, it was already shining _8:24_ at her. Suddenly, her heart started pounding way too hard in her ribcage. She could hear it beating heavily in her ears. “It’s almost eight thirty,” she said in a small voice, and then she grabbed up the rest of her things in a hurry and headed for the door to her room. Arya followed her all the way down the stairs and through the living room, but her sister paused at the door and didn’t follow her any further. Sansa looked back at Arya, and Arya had a more serious expression on her face this time.

 

“Be careful,” Arya told her quietly, and she reached out for Sansa’s upper arm and gently squeezed it with her fingers. Arya suddenly looked ten years younger in that moment, and Sansa wondered what brought on the change in her sister’s demeanor. “If anything happens, call me, okay?” Arya said, looking genuinely nervous now, and Sansa couldn’t explain it, but she didn’t have time to talk with Arya about it, not unless she wanted to be late.

 

“Okay,” Sansa agreed, and she hurried down the steps and off onto the sidewalk. Her feet carried her down the road under each streetlight, and well before she reached the end of it, she saw his car waiting at the end—and suddenly, Sansa stopped, her heart pounding inside her chest like crazy.

 

 _Is this such a good idea?_ Sansa asked herself, questioning her own thoughts and desires this past week for the very first time. She had been so upset when he said no to seeing her again that she didn’t expect to feel so unnerved when he finally said yes. For one brief moment, she thought about turning back around and running up to her room, throwing herself onto her bed and just leaving him out here because she was too afraid to walk the extra distance to his car.

 

. . . And then she remembered how he had helped her, how he had been uncommonly gentle with her unlike Joffrey, and she didn’t feel so afraid anymore with that memory in her head. Shouldering her resolve, Sansa walked the extra distance to his car and approached the passenger door. This was it, she thought. Sansa reached out to grab the handle. She pulled it open, moved to sit down, and closed the door. It shut behind her with a sense of finality in the motion.

 

When Sansa glanced over at him, Sandor was looking at her with a hint of amusement on his face. “Hey,” he repeated, and she found herself breaking out into a grin at that.

 

“Hey,” she said once more as well, and then she burst out laughing because it was just so funny. “I’m so sorry,” Sansa told him, and she shook her head at herself. God, her hands were trembling. How nervous was she? She refused to put them on the armrests and give herself away, so she tucked them between her legs instead and squeezed her knees shut over them.

 

“You know, you apologize a lot,” Sandor said, pulling the car out of park and starting to drive.

 

Sansa aimed a nervous smile at him. “Should I apologize to that?” she asked.

 

He laughed. “Please, don’t,” Sandor told her, shaking his head. “I don’t know how much courtesy I can take in one night.”

 

She grinned, taking comfort in his reaction. “I thought courtesy was a good thing,” Sansa said.

 

“In small doses.”

 

“But you work in a bar as a bartender. Don’t you have to give people really good customer service and be really nice to them all of the time?”

 

“Actually, I can be a dick whenever I want,” Sandor said, pulling up to a stop sign. He brought the car to a stop, looked both ways, and then headed forward again. “And what about you? What makes you so courteous?”

 

Sansa wrinkled her nose. “My parents, I guess. Raising me a certain way, I mean.”

 

“To be a polite, little perfect imitation of a human being?” Sandor asked her, glancing over at her momentarily.

 

“You make it sound like it’s a bad thing.”

 

“It is if it’s forced and not genuine,” he said, and Sansa thought she could agree with him on that. Suddenly, she realized she wasn’t so nervous anymore. Her hands had stopped trembling somehow during their conversation, and Sansa noticed she felt quite relaxed as she sat there, so she released her hands from the confines of her legs and placed them in her lap—and that was when she realized she hadn’t put her seatbelt on.

 

“Oh, crap,” she said quickly, reaching for it and buckling up. Sandor glanced over at her, and when he noticed what she was doing, he started to laugh again.

 

“Really?” he asked. “You can walk into a bar with a fake ID, but you can’t go without a seatbelt on?”

 

Sansa’s face flamed red. She could feel the heat on her face. “Shut up,” she said weakly, but her voice faltered with the smallest strain of humor at her own reaction. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sandor shaking his head at her. He was still amused if his upward curled lip was anything to go by, and Sansa reached up to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. “So, where are we going?” she suddenly asked him, wondering where he was driving to after all.

 

“I don’t know,” Sandor said, shrugging his shoulder. “I’m just driving. Anywhere you want to go?”

 

Sansa thought about it for a moment. Joffrey never asked her what she wanted to do; they always did what he wanted to do. It was strange, being given a choice, but she liked it. It felt nice to be given a choice to voice her own opinion instead of being expected to just go along with someone else’s plans. “Have you ever been to the Narrow Sea Strip?”

 

“I’m not a beach person,” he told her, “so, no.”

 

“Well, they have this huge pier, and it’s really nice there,” Sansa explained. “I’d like to go there. I’ve never seen it at night, and they have a ton of lights they turn on at night, I’ve heard. It’s really beautiful, I bet.”

 

“Okay,” Sandor said. “We’ll go there.”

 

As they drove the rest of the way, Sansa kept up the conversation because she didn’t want to drive in silence. Surprisingly, it was really easy to talk to Sandor. Sansa didn’t see any traces of the anger she saw in him that last night at the pub. He was calmer now, and the sense of danger she felt from him seemed to have completely dissipated as they carried on their conversation with each other. He had a sense of humor, and he didn’t seem to take anything too seriously. Sansa tried to wonder what it was about him that mildly frightened her at first, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She doubted she ever knew what it was in the first place. Aside from yelling and kicking over the garbage can, which wasn’t anything she hadn’t seen her father do as well, Sandor hadn’t done anything intimidating or scary. He just seemed like a normal guy.

 

They pulled up into the long strips of parking at the beach, and Sandor found a parking space close to the pier. Sansa got out of the vehicle at the same time as him, and she glanced over to the darkness near the edge of the parking lot that was shrouded with trees and heavy foliage overgrowth. There was a car there, and when she squinted her eyes to look closer, she noticed it was a police car. They were probably just watching the strip for idiots, Sansa thought. A lot of people went drinking and then headed to the beach to try and swim while drunk or have sex in public, and the police made a lot of arrests over the weekend out here. College students were the biggest offenders. Her older brother, Robb, had gotten in trouble for skinny dipping with his girlfriend Jeyne Westerling out here once or twice, or was it three times? Sansa couldn’t remember.

 

Sandor called out to her, and Sansa turned away from looking at the police car to look at him. He was already ahead of her, holding out his arms at his sides as he walked backwards. “Well, are you coming?” he asked her. “This was your idea,” he then added pointedly, lifting a hand to aim a finger at her, and Sansa smiled at him.

 

“Yeah, I’m coming,” she said, and she hurried to catch up. They walked through an opening in the lines of trees onto a wooden walkway that led to the pale sand of the beach. Looking up at the sight before her, Sansa felt her mouth fall open in awe. The pier was lit from head to toe with little bulbs of white light, glowing brightly against the night sky. It looked like a million lightning bugs had attached themselves to the pier and made it their home. She hurried ahead of Sandor, her feet carrying her swiftly up the large set of steps until she reached the very top and stood there to gaze across all of it.

 

“I wish I had a camera,” Sansa said quietly to herself. Her eyes roved over everything, taking it all in with a soft smile on her face. It really was beautiful out here. Sandor walked up behind her, and she sensed his presence without him having to say anything. He was a really big man, and she could just sense him somehow because of that, she guessed, but it was an odd feeling she had never had before. Some part of her doubted it was his height, but she couldn’t imagine what else could alert her to him being near her.

 

“It’s nice out here,” he said casually, looking around at everything the same way she had done.

 

“Yeah,” Sansa agreed, looking back at him to smile, and then she headed forward onto the pier with a silent invitation for him to follow her. “Do you swim?” she asked him.

 

“Not really,” Sandor said, and he sounded like he wondered why she asked him that question.

 

Sansa turned around to face him, leaning herself against the railing of the pier. She curled her arms around the backside of the railing, grabbing the bars as she leaned back. “What are your hobbies?” she asked him. “You have hobbies, don’t you? Things you like to do?”

 

Sandor looked thoughtful for a moment, and then he went up to the railing about a foot away from her, leaning his forearms on top of it. “To be honest,” he said, “I don’t do a whole lot. I bullshit with Steffon and Allard, the brothers who work for me at my pub. I run, jog, work . . . ” He looked like he was going to add something to that list, but then he turned around and decided not to. Sandor turned to look at her. “What about you? What are your hobbies?”

 

Sansa felt herself smiling at him, and his expression grew wary as he gazed at her. “I’m going to have to find hobbies for you,” Sansa told him, and he snorted at that, turning his head away.

 

“Don’t you dare,” he said. “I don’t need anymore hobbies.”

 

“But you don’t have any hobbies,” she corrected him, “so I’m going to help you find some. You need something to do to pass the time in enjoyment. Everybody does.” Sansa felt this was a good idea. Idle hands were the devil’s playground was an old saying she remembered hearing all of the time, and if he did have a drinking problem as she suspected, then perhaps a new hobby would take his mind off of it and help him with it. Sansa didn’t know why she cared about that, but some part of her did. She wanted to help him. Not to get him to like her or anything like that, though. Sansa just liked doing nice things for people because it made her feel good about herself. She didn’t see the harm in it.

 

“Well, what about you?” Sandor asked again. “What do you do for fun?”

 

Sansa pursed her lips as she tilted her head back and stared up at the night sky. It really was very beautiful out here tonight—and chilly. She was getting cold, and in her rush to get out of the door, she had forgotten to grab a jacket.

 

“I like to read books,” Sansa began slowly, ticking off all of the things inside of her head. “I like to spend time with my friends and my sister. I enjoy every subject at school,” she added, feeling strange mentioning school around him given the age difference, but she went to school and that wasn’t going to change for another year. “I think I would like to be a teacher one day maybe. I’m not sure yet. I also really like video games, board games, and building things. I helped my brothers Robb and Jon build a castle for my younger brother Rickon in the backyard. He calls it ‘Winterfell Castle’ after the street we live on, and he says he’s the King of Winterfell.” Sansa rolled her eyes in amusement, but she was grinning all the same. She mimicked a deeper voice, repeating the words of her baby brother. “‘The Starks have ruled Winterfell for eight _thousand_ years!’” she said.

 

Sandor chuckled at that, bowing his head as he shook his head. “The kid’s got some imagination,” he said, looking over at Sansa.

 

“I know, right?” Sansa said, laughing as well. “Eight thousand years ago, Egypt didn’t even have a civilization yet. God, getting a bit ahead of yourself, Rickon. Oh!” Sansa suddenly said. “And I really like to sing, too.”

 

“You sing?” Sandor asked, suddenly interested in that particular bit of information.

 

“Yes,” Sansa said shyly, “I sing.”

 

“Sing something for me,” suggested Sandor, but Sansa suddenly felt a bizarre and strangely intense sensation of anxiety. Not the kind of high school talent show anxiety either, but the kind of Broadway musical anxiety. Even if she had never sung on Broadway, she was sure _this_ is how she would feel if she was asked to perform on Broadway. She didn’t even realize it until she let go of the railing, but her hands were shaking. Sansa laughed uneasily, and wrung her hands together in front of herself.

 

“I’m too nervous . . . ”

 

“You ever sung in front of a crowd before?” he asked.

 

“Yes,” Sansa said.

 

“Well, then, what’s so different about singing to me? I’m a crowd of one. It can’t be that bad.”

 

Sansa felt a blush creeping up her cheeks. “Really, I—”

 

Sandor leaned forward suddenly, looking her straight in the eyes. His intense gaze locked her in place. “ _Sing_ ,” he said.

 

There were butterflies fluttering around in her stomach, but she took a deep breath and schooled herself into as calm a state as possible. Sansa felt stupid singing a pop song or something like that, so she settled for singing a hymn from her mother’s church called ‘Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy.’ She couldn’t sing the Latin version, obviously, but she could sing the English version, and she tried to the best of her ability, but her voice faltered towards the end as she trailed off to finish it.

 

When she looked back at him, Sandor didn’t even seem to notice. He quickly looked away, and there was a gleam in the soft lights of the pier. Sansa saw Sandor’s hand pass over the side of his face. “You have a really beautiful voice,” he told her without looking at her, staring out at the ocean instead of facing her, and Sansa wondered to herself . . . was that a . . . did he just . . .

 

“Was that a tear?” she blurted out before she could stop herself, and she leaned closer to him to try and get a look at his face. “Were you _crying_?”

 

When Sandor noticed her proximity from the side, he pulled away from her and narrowed his eyes at her. “What? _No_ ,” he said quickly. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

 

Sansa wasn’t deterred by him leaning away, and she got closer to him again, putting her hand on the back of his shoulder. “Oh, that’s so _cute_ —” Sansa said with a bright smile plastered on her face, unable to stop herself, but Sandor pulled away from her again, and this time he walked to the other side of the pier and leaned against the railing over there. He eyed her from the other side.

 

“You sound like one of those songbirds from the fifties,” Sandor said, pointing at her. He dropped his hand back to the railing behind him. “I’m going to start calling you ‘little bird,’” he shot back with a gleam in his eyes.

 

Sansa’s mouth dropped open. “No, don’t you _dare_ —”

 

“Why not? You sound like a bird.”

 

“I am _not_ a bird—”

 

Sandor leaned forward away from the railing as he still held onto it, staring at her with determined eyes across the distance. “Little bird,” he said in a low voice, and Sansa gasped in disbelief.

 

“Oh my god, _stop_ that!”

 

Sandor started laughing low. He shook his head at her. “It’s too easy,” he said, gesturing at her. “You make it way too easy.”

 

Sansa crossed her arms at him. Well, fine, he got his payback on her. She shouldn’t have asked him if that was a tear. It could have just been a play of the light on his face, and she embarrassed him with that, so now he had gotten her back. Sansa let out an annoyed huff of air, and then she shivered, realizing just how cold she had gotten standing out here without a jacket on her arms. The wind was blowing chilly, and goose bumps prickled up on her arms. Sansa shivered again, and tried to rub them down.

 

“Are you cold?” Sandor suddenly asked her, and Sansa looked up at him.

 

She nodded her head. “Yeah,” she said. “I forgot to bring a jacket with me tonight. I guess I forgot.” She smiled nervously, and Sandor pushed himself off of the railing and walked over to her, shucking off his jacket. He draped it over her shoulders from the front, and she could feel its immediate warmth from his use of it cutting off the cold air from her bare skin.

 

Joffrey had never given her his jacket, and he certainly never would have draped it over her shoulders like this. Sansa felt her fingers clutching onto the warm fabric, drawing it closer towards her. It was such a simple gesture, and a very kind one at that. Sansa wanted to look away out of embarrassment at her reaction to it, but she found herself looking up at Sandor instead. She stared at him as he straightened the shoulders, and then Sandor stopped suddenly when he noticed her looking at him like that.

 

Sandor was quiet for a moment, his hands stilling on her shoulders. “Better?” he finally asked her, his voice so low and quiet. It sent tingles through Sansa’s shoulders the way it did the first night she met him when he leaned over the counter to talk to her.

 

Sansa slowly nodded her head. “Yes,” she said, smiling. “Much better. Thank you.”

 

Sandor pulled his hands away like he hadn’t even noticed her reaction. Part of her was relieved that he didn’t seem to notice, but another part of her felt a little disappointed, but it was okay. She liked just talking with him. It was nice. Sansa watched as Sandor returned back to the railing on her side this time. “So,” he said, turning back around to face her again and crossing his arms over his chest, “tell me more about yourself.”

 

Sansa’s smile grew wider, and she joined Sandor by the rails of the pier to tell him more about herself.

 

 


	7. You’re Hell on Wheels

  _* * *  
_  


 

It was a boring night. Absolutely nothing was going on. Brienne broke open a small bag of Funyuns, popping one of the smaller ones into her mouth. She crunched down on it, glancing around outside of the windows of her car, but the beach was clean tonight despite it being a Friday. It was still early, though. If she gave it some time, she was certain in no time there would be some annoying damn teenagers or college kids out here to endanger themselves or mess something up. They had a vandal the other night who tried to spray paint the beach signs.

 

Brienne leaned over to turn on the radio to play some music for entertainment. This silence was killing her. Normally, she rode with Jaime, but he had some business tonight halfway across town. When she pulled back and looked beyond her windshield, Brienne suddenly froze in place, her jaw falling open as she stared ahead at the scene before her. She leaned closer to the windshield, closing her mouth and swallowing the rest of the chewed up Funyun inside of it, and realized she wasn’t seeing things. No, this was really happening right in front of her.

 

Immediately turning off the radio, she grabbed the intercom piece and pressed down on the button. “Hey, Jaime?” Brienne called through the system. She paused for a moment, waiting for an answer. “Jaime, are you there?” She kept her eyes on the two people in the parking lot, but then she saw them walking towards the beach. Brienne dropped the intercom and snatched up her binoculars to get a better look. They were heading for the pier. _What in the world is going on?_ Brienne thought to herself, utterly perplexed by the situation right in front of her nose.

 

Suddenly, there came a crackling noise from the intercom system in the center of the dash. “Hey,” crackled a smoky voice back to her through the line. Brienne froze in place yet again, only this time for a completely different reason, and slowly looked down at the intercom. “Soooo . . . ” the fuzzy voice drawled out through the com, “what are you wearing?”

 

Brienne rolled her eyes. _Really?_ she thought. _At a moment like this?_ Brienne opened her mouth to snap at Jaime, but then she paused and reached up to rub the back of her neck. _Oh, what the hell_ , Brienne thought with a soft sigh. She felt the corner of her mouth tug into a little smile.

 

“A little lace teddy,” she said slowly, “with fuzzy fur trim.”

 

His voice crackled back through the line. “ . . . Ooh, the blue teddy or the pink teddy?”

 

Brienne bit down on both of her lips for a moment, trying her hardest not to laugh. She was in full uniform, but this was a game of theirs, and he was well aware of what she was really wearing. “Blue,” she finally answered when she calmed herself down enough not to laugh afterwards.

 

Jaime’s voice crackled back at her, “Why don’t you . . . take it off for me . . . nice and slow.”

 

Brienne cleared her throat. “Jaime,” she said suddenly, “you do realize this is a public line and the whole department has access to it, and anyone can tune in at any moment and hear us—”

 

Just then, as if on cue, another voice crackled in over the intercom and filled Brienne’s car. “Brienne and Jaime, sitting in a tree . . . ” It was Loras Tyrell. Brienne would recognize that voice anywhere.

 

“F-u-c-k-i-n- _g_ ,” crackled in a second voice right after Loras, and Brienne knew that voice as well. It was Renly Baratheon, Loras’s boyfriend. Clearly, Loras was hanging out with Renly on duty yet again, or he was paying Renly’s nightclub another late night visit while making his rounds.

 

Both boys started to laugh hysterically at their own joke, and then Loras cut in with, “Wow, that sounds really uncomfortable, fucking in a tree.”

 

“Yeah, I don’t think I could do it,” Renly’s voice crackled over the line after his boyfriend had spoken.

 

“You little shit stains,” Jaime’s voice crackled back through the line, and this time he sounded really angry. “Next time I see you, Loras, I’m going to shove this baton so far up your ass—”

 

“Ooh, come on over, big boy—” crackled Loras’s voice over the com.

 

“Bring it, baby—” Renly’s crackled over next.

 

“We’ll make a sword-swallower out of you yet—”

 

“Jaime Lannister, _Dickslayer_ —”

 

“Sucking cocks for the good of the realm—”

 

“Anal play in 3D—”

 

“Pay per view, all week long—”

 

“Cha- _ching_!” Renly and Loras called out at the same time, their voices surrounded by the fuzzy crackle of the intercom.

 

Brienne couldn’t help it. She doubled over herself, laughing so hard her sides were hurting from the force of it. She grabbed at her sides to try and squeeze the ache out of them, but it did no good. Brienne took a deep breath to try and calm herself back into some sense of professionalism. Shaking her head at the absurdity of it all, she reached for her intercom.

 

“Jaime,” she said, pressing down on the button, utterly breathless from laughter. “Please, just call me on my cell phone, and we’ll talk about this. It’s very important.” Brienne put back the com radio and turned it off, removing the inane comments from Loras and Renly from her vehicle. It was back to silence again until her phone started to ring in the empty seat beside her.

 

Brienne picked up her phone and swiped the screen to answer it. “Hello?” she said.

 

“Hey,” Jaime said, and then suddenly he added, “that fucking little prick—”

 

“Let it go, Jaime,” Brienne said calmly. “Let it go.”

 

There was a moment of silence. “I hate him,” Jaime told her, though he sounded more relaxed this time, “and his boyfriend.”

 

“I know,” Brienne replied, “but you really have no one to blame but yourself for that one.” She said that last part with a smile, and even though Jaime couldn’t see it, she was sure he could hear it through the tone of her voice.

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Jaime said, and he sighed. “Anyway, what is it? You said there was something important you had to talk to me about.”

 

“You’re not going to believe this . . . ” Brienne started, and she picked up her binoculars again to scope out the pier from a distance. They were still on it, talking, or at least it seemed like that from here. Brienne narrowed her eyes to try and get a better view of them, but they were still so small to her sight even with the magnification of the binoculars.

 

“Why?” Jaime asked. “What is it?”

 

Brienne paused for a moment. “Sandor Clegane is on the pier with Sansa Stark,” she said.

 

“ _What?_ ” Jaime demanded.

 

Brienne thought he might react that way. She knew Jaime pretty well, and given how his nephew had been dating Sansa, this was probably a big shock for him. Not only that, but he and Clegane had a history together, and it wasn’t a good history. Those two went way back. Clegane was a repeat offender and a felon, and he had been arrested so many times that even Brienne lost count of them all. She tried to recall the most recent offense to mind. “Do you remember that Saltpans incident over on Tebeau?” Brienne asked Jaime through the phone, putting down her binoculars in the seat next to her.

 

“Brienne, I know who Sandor Clegane is,” Jaime informed her. “I was the one who arrested him there—and multiple times at various other locations as well, I might add.”

 

“Yeah, well, he’s on the pier with the Stark girl,” Brienne said flatly. She didn’t like Jaime’s tone of voice with her. Of course she was aware that he knew who Sandor Clegane was. Did he think she was some dumb blonde who couldn’t remember anything? Brienne shook the angry thoughts from her head and pursed her lips in contemplation. “Do you remember that night she went missing a week ago?” she asked.

 

“Yeah . . . ”

 

“Maybe she was with him?” Brienne suggested.

 

Jaime was quiet at first. “Is anything happening?” he finally asked her through the phone, sounding tense to Brienne’s ears. If anyone knew Sandor Clegane, it was Jaime Lannister. If he felt uncomfortable about something, then he had a good reason for it.

 

Brienne shook her head, even though Jaime couldn’t see it. “No, nothing is happening. They are just standing there together. It looks like they are talking, but that’s all I can see. She came here with him in his car. I mean, isn’t that weird, Jaime?”

 

“Yes, that’s weird,” Jaime agreed. “Sansa Stark is the good child. Arya is the troublemaker. Sansa was dating my nephew until a few days ago. What is she doing with Clegane?” Jaime seemed to be asking himself that last question, and Brienne didn’t try to answer it because she had no answer for it either. The whole situation was just as strange to her as it was to him.

 

“You don’t think she’s in danger, do you?” Brienne asked warily.

 

“I want to say no,” Jaime said, but he sounded unsure. “Clegane has a rough and violent history, but never anything against women.” He was silent for a moment on the other end of the line. “Keep an eye on them for now, Brienne. I’ll check the books and see if there are any regulations against being on the pier at night. Call me if anything happens, or if they leave. If I find something, I’ll call you back and head over there immediately.”

 

“Will do, Jaime,” Brienne told him.

 

Jaime ended the call, and Brienne put her phone in her uniform pocket this time. She picked up the binoculars again, and kept her watch on the pier.

 

 


	8. A Rate That is Truly Alarming

_* * *_

 

They were at the pier for almost two hours, just talking to each other. Sansa told him more about herself, and in return, she asked some questions of her own and he answered them up to the extent that he was comfortable with answering. A few people showed up on the beach in the distance from time to time, taking a stroll at night, but other than that the place was clear and quiet and the air was fresh. It was a nice difference from being cooped up in the pub most of the night, Sandor thought to himself. Despite the loss of his jacket, he wasn’t cold either. Besides, even if he was, he would live with it as long as Sansa was all right.

 

Sansa didn’t say anything about having to go home yet, but Sandor thought it was about time that he ought to drive her back. He didn’t want to spend too much time with her, or stay out too late with her, because something about the idea just bothered him, though he couldn’t say why. Maybe he didn’t want her getting the wrong idea about his intentions. So far, aside from her touching his back, Sansa hadn’t tried to cross any lines with him. The moment she had leaned on him while putting her hand on his back, Sandor had pulled away from her and walked to the opposite side of the pier. It was his way of saying _keep your distance_ , and with it, Sansa hadn’t tried to touch him again, so he figured the message was clear without him having to say it out loud.

 

Once they were back in the car, Sandor noticed the police vehicle that pulled out from the beach parking lot and followed them. He drove slow and obeyed all of the traffic laws until he realized the vehicle was following him on purpose. It turned every single corner he turned, and then, when he temporarily changed directions and confused Sansa in the seat next to him, the vehicle did the same thing and turned its course to follow him again.

 

“Why’d you take that road?” Sansa asked him suddenly. “My house is that way—” And she pointed in the opposite direction. Was it just his ears, or was she nervous again?

 

Sandor didn’t want to say anything to Sansa about the police vehicle, though. For starters, he wasn’t sure why the hell it was following him anyway. It wasn’t like he was doing anything illegal, and if they were following him simply because of _who_ he was, well, then that would just piss him off. Sandor had been clean and trouble-free for well over six months, and he was trying his damnedest not to return back to his old lifestyle. Most of the coppers seemed to respect that, but there was one of them . . .

 

“Ah, sorry,” Sandor told her, trying to sound a little absent-minded. “Forgot which turn.”

 

It was a lie, but it was better than the alternative. He finally made it to her house and parked at the curb of the house before hers, same as he did the last time, and Sansa looked over at him this time to smile at Sandor. If she had been nervous a moment ago, she definitely wasn’t nervous now. “Thank you,” she said, her blue eyes glittering as she grinned at him, “for agreeing to be my friend.”

 

Sandor nodded his head once. “Yeah,” he said, “sure.”

 

“Goodnight,” Sansa told him, and then she opened the door and stepped out of his vehicle. She closed the door behind herself with a gentle push, and Sandor watched as she returned to her house. When Sansa was safely inside, Sandor looked out of his rearview mirror as he pulled off of the curb. The parked police car pulled out as well, and slowly, it continued to follow him down the road. Sandor gritted his teeth in his mouth. He had an idea of who was behind this. There was only one person who hated him this much.

 

He drove halfway back to his apartment, waiting for a moment when the car would turn off onto a different road and cease its pattern, but it kept its distance and kept its pattern. Finally, Sandor pulled off onto the side of the road into a legal parking space—no point in giving them ammunition for the fire—and got out of his car, slamming the door behind himself.

 

He made a beeline straight for the parked police car.

 

If they noticed him, they didn’t pull off and hurry away. If they didn’t notice him coming towards their direction, they were idiots. It wasn’t long before Sandor was close enough to the car that he could see who was inside of it. He recognized her from a few of the run-ins he had with Jaime Lannister. She was Jaime’s partner, an enormously tall woman almost the same height as Sandor, and built like a house.

 

Sandor walked right up to her window and rapped his knuckles against it. She was looking up at him from her seat with what looked like fear in her eyes, and Sandor saw her hand reach for the gun strapped at her side. He had a moment of panic himself at her reaction, but he schooled his face into perfect calmness. Despite her reach for the gun, she never drew it out, but her hand remained rested right on top of the weapon.

 

“Back away from the vehicle, sir,” she called through the closed window.

 

“Or what?” Sandor asked her, nearly growling. “Are you going to shoot me? Is that it?” He held up both of his arms and turned around in a circle for her, dropping his hands back to his sides afterwards. “Where’s my weapon, girl? How are you going to explain that one to the department?”

 

“I will not repeat myself, sir,” she called out this time, and her face took on a fiercer quality as she glared at him through the glass of her window.

 

“You’re the one following _me_ ,” Sandor snarled. “Tell me, did Lannister put you up to this? Was it him? That little prick doesn’t know when to mind his own fucking business.”

 

“Back away from the vehicle, _sir_ ,” she repeated more firmly than before, refusing to answer any of his questions. Sandor saw her hand grip her weapon tighter, and scowling deeply, he backed away from her car like she said. It wouldn’t do to scare her into shooting him.

 

Sandor pointed at her, though. He wasn’t going to let this one go that easily. “You tell that fucking prick Jaime Lannister to back the fuck off!” he barked at her.

 

“I am _warning_ you, sir—”

 

Sandor turned away from the police vehicle and stormed across the street back to his parked car. He didn’t have time to deal with this bullshit. If these fucking coppers wanted to make his life hard, he would find a way to do the same right back to them. Not tonight, though. Tonight he just wanted to get back home and work off his anger. Exercise worked off his anger. It was probably why he exercised so fucking much. It was better than drinking. Anything but that.

 

When he pulled off from the parking space, the police car didn’t follow him again. Sandor drove the rest of the way back to his apartment without incident. He got up to his apartment, and when he went to go fishing through his pockets to remove his things from them in his usual daily routine, he realized he wasn’t wearing his jacket—and Sansa still had it with her.

 

“Shit,” Sandor said out loud. He had forgotten to get it back from her. Well, at least he didn’t have anything important in it. He could get it back from her the next time he saw her. Once Sandor thought that, he froze in place. First, he couldn’t wait to get rid of her, and now, what? He thought about the next time he would see her again? Was he getting used to her already? Sandor shook his head at his thoughts. He wasn’t sure where they were coming from, but he supposed it wasn’t that big of a deal. He did just spend the evening with her, and if he admitted it to himself, it was nice.

 

He went back downstairs after changing into some running clothes and jogged around the block to work off his anger. He was sweaty and tired afterwards, and when he trudged back up to his apartment, he took a shower and shaved afterwards. His thoughts didn’t wander a whole lot, and mostly he thought about going back to the pub starting tomorrow. He couldn’t stay at home all day for another day with nothing to do. Sandor worked so much because work kept him busy, and staying busy was good for him.

 

Besides, he wasn’t trying to avoid Sansa Stark anymore either.

 

Sandor set an alarm on his phone and set it by his bed. It was still early for him, but it wasn’t like it would kill him to go to bed early. He was lying down, his eyes closed, for maybe all of ten minutes when his phone started ringing on the nightstand beside his bed.

 

Opening his eyes, he turned his head to glare at his phone. Who was calling him at this particular moment, and could they have picked a worse moment to call? Sighing in frustration, Sandor reached over and snatched up his phone to accept the call without even looking at the number. “Hello?” he asked, bringing the phone up to his ear.

 

It was quiet on the other end at first. Then, a soft voice said, “Hi.”

 

It was Sansa.

 

He figured he should have been annoyed, but surprisingly, hearing her voice on the other end made him relax. What little bit of tension had remained in his muscles from that encounter with Brienne that the exercising couldn’t eradicate finally faded away. “Hey,” Sandor said, and then he asked almost immediately, “why are you calling?”

 

“Um, I just wanted to thank you for tonight,” Sansa said in her same quiet voice. It was almost like she was talking that way on purpose so no one would hear her. “It was fun.”

 

Sandor was pretty sure he had never in all of his life _ever_ uttered the words he was about to say, but suddenly they came out of his mouth anyway. “You’re welcome,” he told her, and he made a face at himself once he realized what he had said. _What the fuck did I just say?_ “Uh, yeah,” he added, “it was nice. I had a good time.” But that didn’t sound right to his ears either, and Sandor made another face at himself before covering his face with his hand and shaking his head.

 

“Can we hang out again?” Sansa asked quietly, and Sandor was beginning to wonder, was she lying down too? He pushed that thought away as quickly as it had come to the surface.

 

He didn’t really have to think about it, though.

 

“Sure,” Sandor said. “When’s a good time for you?”

 

“Next week?” she asked. “What about Wednesday?”

 

Sandor had his meetings on Wednesdays. It wasn’t a good day for hanging out. “Wednesday is not a good day for me,” he told her. “What about Thursday?”

 

“Okay,” Sansa said, and it sounded like she was grinning. “Thursday it is. Should I be ready by a certain time?”

 

Sandor wasn’t sure about that one. Maybe he ought to hang out with her during the day instead of at night. Then again, during the day, he had the inopportune possibility of running into people he knew or people she knew, and Sandor wasn’t so sure he wanted to deal with other people’s bullshit regarding him hanging out with someone much younger than him. Sure, Sansa was young, but she was smart for a girl her age and, if he admitted it to himself, she was actually fun to talk to and he found himself enjoying it. As strange as it seemed, it was the truth. She wasn’t so bad for a teenager. While she had been annoying at first, once he spent some time getting to know her, she really wasn’t all that annoying at all.

 

He also didn’t want to deal with people taking it the wrong way and thinking he was involved with her. Even though he liked talking to her, he wasn’t about to cross that line. Sansa was far too young for him, but they could be friends and there wasn’t anything wrong with that in Sandor’s eyes. Some people just got bugs up their asses over little shit. They ought to be more concerned with catching serial killers and ending world hunger, but no, befriend a teenager and the whole fucking world was going to end over that.

 

Sandor realized he hadn’t answered her yet. “How about we hang out during the day this time?” he asked her. “Do you know any places we could go?”

 

“Hmmm,” came Sansa’s voice through the phone. She seemed to be thinking about it. “Well, we could go to the mall, but I don’t know if you’d like to go there. Everybody goes to the mall, and it’s nothing special anyway. Unless you like books,” Sansa suddenly added, sounding very chipper about it. “They have a really good bookstore there.”

 

 _What the hell_ , Sandor thought. He wasn’t much of a reader, but if it was something she liked, then what the hell, right? “Sounds good,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at three?”

 

“Okay,” Sansa answered him, and he could hear the smile in her voice again. Sandor felt the corner of his mouth twitch upward in a small smile of its own. “I’ll see you then,” she said.

 

“Goodnight,” Sandor told her. “Oh, wait a second,” he added quickly. “You have my jacket.”

 

There was long pause on the other end. “Yeah, I do,” she said slowly. “I’ll bring it with me next time,” Sansa told him in a faster voice than before.

 

He nodded his head, even though she couldn’t see it. “Okay,” he said. “Goodnight,” Sandor repeated.

 

“Goodnight,” Sansa said quietly, and he heard the phone _click_ as it hung up.

 

Sandor pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it for a moment. He took a deep breath and exhaled, wondering once more and not for the first time exactly what was he doing. _Trying to make friends_ , he told himself, but his eyes narrowed at the thought as he thought of it, and suddenly, for one brief moment, it didn’t sound so convincing in his head at it had sounded before.

 

He rolled over and put the phone back onto his nightstand, and then returned back to the bed to lie on his back. Sandor stared up at the ceiling and tried to think of the last time he attempted to make any friends, but he couldn’t think of any in recent times at all. There were plenty of people from his life before, back when he was doing fucked up shit all of the time, but those hadn’t been real friends and the crap they bonded over wasn’t anything worth calling part of a friendship. All of those people had been bad news, and at the end of the day, Sandor never liked any of them anyway.

 

He was a different person now, too. Sandor had been trying to get his life back on track into something decent, and so far, he had been doing a pretty damn good job of it. He had been learning how to calm his anger, how to control it, and he stopped getting into so many damn fights that nearly ended with somebody almost dead. Sandor had also given up alcohol—although, to be honest, that was a constant battle and might continue to be for some time. There had been a few occasions of substance abuse in the past, but that was gone as well, and he didn’t make a side living off of illegal activities anymore. That wasn’t something he was very proud of, but it was part of his past and he couldn’t just erase it.

 

A part of him also wondered, however small it was, how Sansa might think of him if she knew of all those things. Sure, she knew he was a bartender, and sure, she knew he was older and clearly had been around the block a few times, but Sandor had a feeling she just didn’t know what kind of person he used to be before he met her. Did it matter who he used to be? Well, he hoped not, but from experience, people were very judgmental and quick to throw stones. Not only that, but she was much younger than him and he had to wonder if she could understand the difference between who a person used to be and who they were _now_. Usually, it wasn’t a concept most teenagers had a grasp on very well, if they had one on it at all.

 

Sandor sighed at his thoughts and pushed them away, turning over onto his side in bed. Why was he even worried what she might think about him? She was just a girl, anyway, and if she ever found out and it bugged her so much, then he could care less what she thought of him. Only that wasn’t true, because some part of him did care how she viewed him. Sandor didn’t want her to be scared of him, and he certainly didn’t want her to be terrified of him. Yes, he had a violent past, but that wasn’t who he was now, and he didn’t want her looking at him, scared of him, afraid of him like he might hurt her.

 

Sandor had been a lot of things in his past, but he wouldn’t hurt an innocent girl. That just wasn’t him, and some part of him hoped she knew that.

 

Fucking hell, he really needed to go to sleep and just stop thinking about her already. He was thinking about her at a rate that was truly alarming, even for him. Sandor grabbed his pillow and shoved it over the side of his head as he grunted in annoyance at himself. It was as if he hoped the pillow might help block out the thoughts from his head like they were coming from somewhere outside of it, but he knew they weren’t. It was all coming from within, and Sandor was aware of it—but still, the pillow seemed to help with slowing down his thoughts, even if it couldn’t shut them all down at once.

 

His breathing evened out as he drifted off, and Sandor fell asleep like that—with his pillow crammed over his head, and his thoughts full of a certain girl by the name of Sansa Stark.

 

 


	9. All This Dog-eared Innocence

_* * *_

 

Sansa laid her phone down beside her pillow on the bed, the little blue light from the screen glowing for a few seconds before fading away to darkness again. She closed her eyes and snuggled her head against his jacket, which she had draped over her pillow with the soft underside up. It smelled so good, but it wasn’t quite cologne. Maybe more like aftershave lotion, she thought. Sansa couldn’t place the scent, but it was soothing and almost intoxicating, and she pressed her nose to the fabric to breathe it in slowly. A sense of comfort washed over her, and she fell asleep that night half laying on and half hugging Sandor’s jacket.

 

In the bright wash of morning light throughout her bedroom, a hand on her shoulder shook Sansa awake. She slowly opened her eyes to see Arya’s grinning face above her. Arya cut a look at the jacket and then at Sansa. “Really, Sansa?” Arya said, referring to the jacket on Sansa’s pillow, and she shook her head at her sister. “You creepy stalker kid.”

 

Sansa made a face at Arya, and then she rolled over to bury her face into the jacket. “Shut up,” she mumbled at her sister, still half asleep.

 

“Nooo,” Arya bemoaned, and she shook Sansa’s shoulder again. “Wake up,” she insisted. “You have to tell me all about it. What happened? Where’d you go? What’d you do? I want to know! _Tell me_!”

 

“Can I wake up first?” Sansa moaned through the padding against her face. “I haven’t even eaten yet, or brushed my teeth . . . ”

 

Arya complained for another thirty minutes, following Sansa to the bathroom as she brushed her teeth and then trailing after her to the kitchen as Sansa fixed a bowl of cereal to eat. Bran threw a ball at Arya’s head, telling her to shut up already. Rickon laughed hysterically as Arya threw the ball back at Bran and hit him smack in the face. Before Sansa knew it, she was calmly eating her cereal at the table with Rickon as Arya and Bran chased each other around the kitchen table and the living room.

 

“I’m going to get you, you little monkey!” Arya shouted at Bran, and Bran jumped on top of the couch—he was nimble for a thirteen-year-old—and ran across the top of it.

 

“Oh ho!” Bran shouted back, looking behind himself. “You’re going to have to catch me first, Faceless Woman!” He jumped down off the couch and ran for the staircase, and Arya skirted around the coffee table to chase after him in a dash up the staircase. Both teens were caught by their parents at the top of the stairs, though, and Ned and Catelyn calmly walked Bran and Arya back down the steps and into the kitchen.

 

“Eat your breakfast,” Ned told Arya with a sharp look in his eyes, though his face was still as kind as a father’s could be while also being stern, and Arya sighed heavily as she took a seat at the kitchen table to eat something like she was told to do. Catelyn sat Bran down herself, making him plop down into the chair, and he had a scrunched up look on his face as his mother forced him to sit.

 

“As your father said,” Catelyn told Bran, pointing her finger at him, and he sighed just like Arya and resumed eating his eggs and toast.

 

Sansa finished before all of them, and she went back up to her room to get dressed for the day. Arya came into her room some time shortly after Sansa was finished dressing and brushing her hair, and she shut the door behind herself and made the extra effort to lock it as well. After that, Arya plopped down on Sansa’s bed and stared across the room with expectant eyes. “So, _tell_ me,” Arya insisted once more, “what happened last night?”

 

Given the barrage from this morning, Sansa was still a little annoyed with her sister, but she filled Arya in on everything as usual while standing before her mirror and fixing her hair. When she mentioned Thursday to Arya, Arya’s eyes lit up like two little light bulbs. Arya jumped off the bed and walked right up to Sansa.

 

“Me and Gendry can go with you!” she suggested happily. “I mean, if you’re going to go somewhere public, best to go with a lot of people, you know what I mean? That’s what me and Gendry always do, that way no one can say we went there _alone_ together. It’s a perfect cover up, though I doubt we’ll run into anyone we know inside of a bookstore. Still, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”

 

Sansa thought it was a good idea, and it wouldn’t hurt anything to do it. Arya and Gendry could meet Sandor for real and maybe form an opinion of him themselves. Sansa cared what the people closest to her thought, and a part of her wanted to know if the two of them would approve. She was certain her other friends most likely wouldn’t approve, and her parents _definitely_ wouldn’t be okay with that, but Sansa was closer to Arya and Gendry than to any of the others and parents were a different matter altogether, anyway. Her parents had approved of Joffrey simply because he was close to her age, and he was a monstrous little weasel.

 

Thursday came faster than Sansa expected it to come, but she didn’t feel strange this time walking out of her front door and down to the end of the street to Sandor’s car. Maybe it was the sun shining overhead or the fact that she had already taken some time to get to know him somewhat, but whatever it was it had put her at ease. She slid into the passenger seat and shut the door behind herself, remembering this time to put on her seatbelt, and they talked about their respective weeks so far until they got to the mall and parked outside the entrance to the bookstore.

 

Sansa was about to get out when she noticed Sandor looked more wary than usual as he regarded the double doors of the establishment. She smiled softly at his reaction, reaching over to lay her hand on top of his, which rested against the steering wheel. Sandor broke away from his reverie long enough to look down at her hand and stare at it quietly. His eyes turned to hers after that, and Sansa felt herself swallow past a catch in her throat before she could speak.

 

“Arya and Gendry are going to meet us here,” Sansa told him, “so we won’t be alone for too long. Come on, it’ll be fun. No one I know comes to the bookstore, anyway.”

 

No one he knew must have frequented there either because shortly after she said that, Sandor finally made a move to get out of the vehicle. She waited for him to come around it to the other side before she joined with his walk, and Sansa almost thought of wrapping her arm around his, but decided against it. It brought a small frown to her face when she thought of the reason. They were in public, where people could see them, and she knew if word got back to her parents, they would kill her. Okay, so maybe they wouldn’t kill her, but they would lock her up in the basement for the next ten years of her life.

 

Sandor strode up to the doors first, holding one open for her, and Sansa grinned up at him as she walked right into a chilly gust of wind from inside the store. She breathed in deeply, enjoying the mingling scent of cool air and fresh books, and walked up to one of the ‘Best Sellers’ tables near the front. Sansa began picking them up and looking through them. “So,” she asked Sandor casually, glancing over at him, “is there anything that you do read?”

 

Sandor had picked up one of the blue-bound paperback books, staring at it with curiosity. “No, I don’t,” he said simply. Holding up the book in his hands, he then asked, “What’s this?”

 

Sansa leaned over to read the title, and her eyes grew wide. “Oh, you don’t want to read _that_ ,” she said. “That’s horrible. All of the good guys die, and the ones who live get tortured to death, anyway.”

 

“Huh, sounds interesting,” Sandor told her. His eyes roved over the title of the book, which he began to read aloud. “ _A Game of Thrones_ ,” he said, “by George R. R. Martin . . . ” Sandor opened the book, flipping over to the first page and started to read out loud. “‘We should start back,’ Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. ‘The wildlings are dead—’”

 

Sansa snatched the book out of his hands, tossing it back onto the pile.

 

“Hey, I was reading that—”

 

Sansa procured a completely different book for him, placing it into his hands with a smile on her face. “You should read this instead,” she informed him. “This is a really good book.”

 

Sandor eyed the front cover. “ _The Alchemist_ by Paulo Coelho?” he asked, raising his eyes to her. “What makes this such a good book? Do the good guys die horrible deaths in this, too?”

 

Sansa sighed in exasperation at him, rolling her eyes. “No, they don’t, but trust me. It’s worth the read. You should buy it and take it home and spend some time reading it. It’s got a lot of really good messages in it, and the story is wonderful. I’m sure you’ll like it if you give it a try.”

 

Given the look on Sandor’s face, she was afraid he would toss the book right back onto the pile with the other one she had tossed back just a few moments ago, but Sandor’s expression turned into thoughtful contemplation as he regarded the book in his hands. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders. “Okay, if you say so,” Sandor told her, and he kept the book in his hands.

 

Sansa grinned at him, and then she took him by his free hand and dragged him through the bookstore and down one of the many aisles. Sansa began pointing out the books that she thought were really good ones and explaining the stories to him, and Sandor would listen sometimes, but then sometimes he would play around like he wasn’t listening at all and one time he grabbed a thin, lightweight paperback and whacked her on the head with it.

 

Gasping in shock, Sansa whirled around to confront him angrily, but Sandor was just standing there and staring forward at the shelves like he was bored. His hands were crossed in front of him, one of them still holding the offending book as well as the copy of _The Alchemist_ , and when Sandor noticed her glaring at him, he finally acted surprised and turned to face her. “Hm?” he asked, raising his eyebrows, and she wanted to be mad. Sansa wanted to be furious, but she found her irritated look fighting to turn into a smile, and she had to cross her arms and turn away from him unless he saw it, but it didn’t work. Sandor had already seen it, and he started laughing at her as soon as she had turned her back to him.

 

When they exited the aisle, Sansa caught sight of Gendry and Arya in the bookstore. They were over near the tables of the adjacent coffee shop, glancing around and looking for her, no doubt. Not wanting to holler out to them, Sansa grinned and took Sandor by the hand once more. She led him over to the coffee shop, letting go of his hand as soon as they reached Gendry and Arya.

 

“Hey!” Sansa said, and she threw her arms around her sister for a hug. She was so happy to see they had come, and the rest of them shared greetings, even Gendry and Sandor, before they all took their seats at the nearest table. Sansa was seated across from Arya, while Sandor and Gendry were seated across from each other, and Gendry whipped out a pack of cards from his pocket.

 

“Who’s up for a game of cards?” Gendry asked as he began shuffling them in his hands. “Blackjack, anyone?”

 

“Finally, something I know,” Sandor said, and he nodded his head. “I’m game.”

 

“I’m game,” Arya called out next, grinning.

 

Sansa was the only one who didn’t know how to play, and she opened her mouth for a while without speaking. “I don’t know how to play,” she ventured hesitantly, looking at all of them, and Sandor’s gaze met hers.

 

“I can teach you,” Sandor said, and he made a motion with his head for her to come closer, so Sansa scooted her chair nearer to his at the table. As Gendry set up the game as the dealer, Sandor tried to explain the rules to Sansa, but she couldn’t remember all of it. Each card was worth a different amount of points, and the purpose was to hit twenty-one without going over twenty-one, but the players couldn’t play against each other, only against the dealer. Sansa just knew she was going to mess it all up, so Sandor said she could play alongside him.

 

As the game got underway, Sansa did mess up—and she messed up numerous times. She forgot her Queen was worth ten points, and then she thought the Ace was a deducting point, and when Gendry started laughing at her, Sansa told him to shut up. Gendry’s laughter sparked Arya’s laughter, though, and before Sansa could tell her sister to shut up too, Sandor was laughing at her as well. Sansa threw her cards down at the table. “Fine!” she exclaimed. “I’m not playing anymore!”

 

“Well, hello kids,” came a familiar voice from somewhere over Sansa’s shoulder to her left, and she felt herself freeze completely in place. Everyone’s laughter at the table died down all of a sudden, and Sansa noticed as they all looked up at the person standing somewhere behind Sansa. She knew the voice without seeing the face, though, and the bottom of her stomach dropped out immediately. Not only that, but Sandor tensed up beside Sansa. She could just feel the apprehension thrumming off of him.

 

Sansa heard the sound of a chair squeaking as it was grabbed and dragged across the floor, and then the chair came down on her right side in the gap that rested between her and Gendry’s chairs. She saw the black uniform out of the corner of her eyes as Officer Jaime Lannister straddled the chair backwards, resting his forearms over the back of it. His gaze ran appreciatively over the occupants of the table until he lifted one of his hands with a single finger pointed upwards.

 

“Oh wait,” Jaime added slowly, and then he began pointing at them one by one and singling them out. “Kid,” he said, pointing at Arya, “kid,” pointing at Sansa, “adult,” pointing at Gendry, “and adult.” Jaime finished by pointing at Sandor, his eyes narrowing at the older man. He lowered his hand back to the chair. “What a strange little group we have here,” Jaime said, shaking his head at them.

 

Gendry surveyed Jaime with a distasteful look. “Were you born a prick, or did your mother just raise you that way?”

 

“My mother was a very kind woman,” Jaime said calmly, ignoring the jab.

 

“Oh, must have been your father, then,” Gendry added. “I heard he’s a real douche.”

 

That got Jaime’s attention, and he cut his eyes at Gendry. “If you know what’s good for you, you’d watch your mouth around an officer of the law while in public,” Jaime told him with a cold sense of calculation. “Then again, if you’re messing around with a sixteen-year-old, I doubt you much know what is good for you.”

 

Gendry shot up from his chair, clenching his fists at his sides and looking ready for a fight. Arya immediately grabbed his arm, holding him in place with a firm grip, and for once to Sansa, her sister looked absolutely terrified of what might happen next. “Gendry,” Arya said as calmly as possible. “Please, sit down. It’s not worth it.”

 

“It’s not _worth_ it?” Gendry asked in angry tones, astonished. “This prick just—”

 

“ _Gendry_ ,” Arya said more firmly, and Gendry shot a look of burning rage right at Jaime Lannister. Instead of storming off, though, Gendry snatched his chair angrily, pulling it away from Jaime and bringing it closer to Arya, and sat back down in it for his girlfriend’s sake.

 

Once Jaime was satisfied with Gendry’s response, he turned his attention onto Sandor. The two men stared each other down like they were in the middle of a Western showdown in a sandy desert, ready to draw guns on each other at any moment. Sansa was the only thing sitting between the two of them, and she could feel herself beginning to shake. Her fingers clutched onto the bottom of her chair for purchase, her heart pounding inside of her chest with an acute sense of pain. She, too, was absolutely terrified of what might happen next. Jaime Lannister was Joffrey’s uncle, and Jaime Lannister was good friends with her parents. What if he took this to their parents and ratted out both her and Arya in one fell swoop? Jaime could do it. He had that power.

 

God, Sansa didn’t want to live in a basement for next ten years of her life.

 

“So,” Jaime said, breaking the uncomfortable silence, “what brings you out here with these kids, Sandor? I never would have pegged you for the family-man type.”

 

Sandor glared at Jaime across the table, but it was Arya who answered him. “He’s my camp counselor over at Crossroads Camp,” Arya lied easily, and it didn’t sound like a lie with the way she said it. “We have volunteer counselors from the community, and Sandor’s new this year.”

 

Jaime raised his eyebrows and glanced over at Arya, surveying her with interest and a bit of surprise. To be honest, even Sansa was impressed with that lie. Arya was good at coming up with stories, but that had to have been one of her best ones made up on the spot yet.

 

Arya barreled on, though, not wanting to stop there. “What, we can’t hang out with our youth counselors outside of camp anymore?” she asked, picking up the forgotten deck of cards and beginning to shuffle them as she met Jaime’s stare across the table. “Is there something wrong with it? I mean, hell, you ever think that’s what’s wrong with our generation today? You guys don’t spend any fucking time with us?”

 

Everyone looked at Arya in shock over her use of a swear word, even Gendry. Jaime, however, turned his appreciative gaze over onto Sandor at this bit of news. “I didn’t know you were a camp counselor,” Jaime said, waiting for Sandor’s response to that. For some reason, Sansa thought that Jaime didn’t completely buy the story, but that he wouldn’t argue it here in public.

 

“You haven’t bothered to get to know me, Lannister,” Sandor returned calmly, and Jaime seemed to have been all out of ammunition for now. Jaime tapped his foot against the floor a few times, his police shoes clacking their solid soles against the tiles, and stood up from the chair. He held onto the back of it for a moment longer, though.

 

“Well,” Jaime said, “enjoy your afternoon, then.”

 

He turned away from their table and made his way through the small crowd of bodies in the coffee shop. All of them watched as Jaime Lannister walked down the main aisle, and they kept watching until he pushed his way out of the bookstore at the far end, exiting out into the sunshine. When the bookstore’s big double doors closed behind Jaime’s retreating figure, they all finally looked back at each other at the table.

 

Arya threw down the deck of cards, grinning like a madwoman, and she stood up to lean over the table. “Ooh, that was good!” Arya exclaimed, holding up her hand to Sandor for a high-five across the table. Sandor shook his head at her, but he raised his hand anyway to strike one with her. Sansa was laughing nervously now, trying to be amused and relieved at the same time, but she still felt worried somehow. Something told her Officer Jaime wasn’t going to let this go so easily, and she was afraid of what might happen the next time if they had another run-in with him.

 

“Now I’m going to have to join your camp,” Sandor said, breaking through Sansa’s troubled thoughts and bringing her back to the present. Sansa glanced over at him. Sandor shook his head again. “Great,” he added, though he didn’t sound too happy about that.

 

“Well, I really do go to a Crossroads Camp,” Arya said, “and they really do have volunteer counselors, so you’re more than welcome to.” She grinned big at him across the table, scooping up the deck of cards again. They continued through a few more games of cards, but eventually, none of them wanted to stay there any longer. Sansa reminded Sandor to buy that book she wanted him to read, and he did. Once they were done at the checkout, they said goodbye to Gendry and Arya, who left in Gendry’s vehicle. Sansa trailed over to Sandor’s car in the parking lot, waiting for him to unlock the doors.

 

When he unlocked them, she got inside quickly. Sansa waited for Sandor to get in the car. As he shut the door behind himself, she spoke. “Hey, maybe we could go to your house,” Sansa suggested.

 

Sandor froze at that. When he returned to himself, he shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

 

Sansa pursed her lips, remembering Arya’s words in her head. _If a man says ‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ that means he really wants to do it, but he’s hoping you’ll talk him out of it_. “Well,” she pushed forward, “hanging out in public isn’t such a good idea, what with that and all.” Sansa tried to give a little laugh to lighten it up, though it came out jittery. “I mean, we’re not doing anything wrong, but Officer Jaime is an asshole.”

 

However, that wasn’t true with Sansa’s past experiences with Jaime. She was just saying that to make Sandor feel better. Jaime had always treated Sansa like a niece, and she had called him Uncle Jaime for the longest time. Ever since her and Joffrey started seeing each other, if she remembered correctly. He had always been close with her family and with her, and she was afraid of losing that now.

 

Sansa didn’t understand why Uncle Jaime had to be such a bastard about this now.

 

“And we can’t hang out at my house,” Sansa reminded him, “with my parents and all. But we can hang out at your house, and nobody will bother us there.” It sounded like a good idea to her. Sansa couldn’t understand why Sandor would think it was a _bad_ idea. They would have more privacy that way, and there wouldn’t be any uncomfortable interruptions like the one they had today in the coffee shop.

 

Sandor was quiet for the longest time in the driver seat. He hadn’t even cranked the car yet. Finally, he raised his head to look out of the windshield, cranked the car, and looked over the backseat as he backed out of the parking space. “Maybe another time,” he said without looking at her.

 

Sansa looked down at her lap, feeling her heart drop. She was so nervous that the whole drive home, she didn’t say anything else. Once they reached her curb, Sansa wordlessly moved to open the door without her usual chattiness. Before she could leave the car, though, Sandor’s hand gently came down upon hers on the armrest. Sansa stopped and turned around to look at him. His face was creased with a look of concern.

 

“Hey, are you all right?” Sandor asked her, and Sansa took a deep breath and nodded back at him.

 

“Yeah,” she lied, “I’m fine.”

 

He looked to be debating something for a moment, and then he said, “I’ll call you later, okay?”

 

“Okay,” Sansa said with a small smile. She turned away from him then, and exited his car, shutting the door behind herself. She walked down the street, the whole time never hearing the roll of his vehicle’s tires as he left. She always heard them the moment she left his car before, and when she creased her brow in confusion, Sansa stopped suddenly and turned around to look back at Sandor . . .

 

. . . but he had already pulled off by the time she was looking back, and Sansa watched as he drove away.

 

 


	10. Five Four Three Two One

_* * *_

 

Jaime was pouring his third drink, and Brienne was beginning to think he really needed to slow down. He had been stressing for the past week over his encounter with the Stark girls, Sandor, and Gendry in the bookstore, and the moment he had told Brienne about it after he had gotten home that evening, Brienne had snapped on him and asked him how stupid could he possibly be. It had resulted in a really huge argument between the two of them, one of their first arguments in a very long time.

 

After she had informed Jaime of what happened that night that she followed Sandor on Jaime’s request, Brienne decided she wasn’t going to be involved with this fiasco anymore. Brienne didn’t think Sandor was really going to hurt her, or at least she hoped he wouldn’t have been so stupid as to try something, but he had scared the living daylights out of her, and that was enough to get her to change her mind about all of this really quick.

 

Besides, Sandor wasn’t breaking any laws. The girl was young, even Brienne could see that, but if the two of them were involved beyond friendship there was nothing Brienne or Jaime could do about it aside from bring the matter to Sansa’s parents and let them sort out matters with their own daughter personally. The age of consent in their country was sixteen across the federal board, which meant that age applied to the city of Kingsland as well. Jaime could be upset about it all he wanted to be, but he wasn’t going to get anywhere with harassing Sandor about it.

 

“Jaime,” Brienne called out to him from the couch. “Really, you need to come sit down.” She stared at him for a moment over the back of the couch, waiting for him to look up and acknowledge her. When he didn’t, Brienne pursed her lips. “Please,” she added in a softer voice, hoping he would listen to her this time.

 

Jaime looked up from his glass of scotch, swirling the liquid around before bringing it to his lips and drinking some more. He stared at Brienne over the rim of his glass, and Brienne reached up to rub her hand across her forehead as she closed her eyes. This was ridiculous. This was absolutely ridiculous.

 

“Brienne, I don’t know what to do.”

 

Brienne dropped her hand, opening her eyes once more. Finally, he was talking to her again. “Well,” she said without looking at him, “you can start by letting it go.”

 

Jaime walked around to the other side of the couch, standing in front of her across the coffee table. “Let it _go_?” he asked, and he sounded just like his father when he said that. Brienne didn’t tell him, though, because he would have a fit over it. Jaime raised his glass, sloshing liquor on the carpet. “I’m just supposed to let it _go_ —”

 

“Hey!” Brienne cried out. “Stop that! That’s new carpet!”

 

“Fuck the carpet!” Jaime exclaimed, waving a careless hand upward. “We’re talking about _Sansa Stark_ here. The young innocent girl of Ned and Cat’s? Do you remember her? She’s off gallivanting with Sandor Clegane—”

 

“Jaime,” Brienne tried to say in a calmer voice, “I know she’s like family to you. I know you worry about her well-being. I know you want to look out for her, but this is not the way to do it. We are police officers. It is our duty to uphold the law, not to uphold our ideals. If you don’t let this go, Sandor Clegane can walk right up to the department and file a _harassment_ charge against you.” Brienne stressed out the word for Jaime to make sure he got it. “He is well within his legal rights to do so if you don’t stop this nonsense at _once_.”

 

Jaime was quiet again, and he looked down at his drink once more. Brienne watched with agitation as he swirled it about again, and then she watched as Jaime took yet another swig of his drink. She gritted her teeth so hard it hurt. Jaime was so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he wasn’t paying any attention to hers at all.

 

Finally, though, Jaime placed his glass down on the coffee table. He stumbled over to Brienne, falling on the couch, and laid his head in her lap. For the first time since their initial fight, Brienne felt herself relaxing somewhat. This was a positive sign. Maybe Jaime was finally going to listen to her after all. She brought her hand up to his hair and stroked her fingers through it, trying to calm him down. He was so wound up over this. Brienne didn’t understand it.

 

“I don’t want her to get hurt,” Jaime said really quiet like, and Brienne had to strain her ears just to hear him. “You don’t understand, Brienne. You haven’t seen Clegane do the things I’ve seen him do . . . ”

 

Brienne pondered this for a moment as she stroked his hair. “And what do you think he’ll do to her?”

 

Jaime was silent at first. “I don’t know,” he said. There was a pause. “I just don’t know.”

 

“Well,” Brienne began, “maybe he’s trying to change? He hasn’t been in trouble with the law for a while now, and . . . ” Brienne paused. She wasn’t sure if she should mention that bit. That night she saw Sandor and Sansa on the pier, she had seen Sansa Stark singing to Sandor. It was so strange, but she knew singing when she saw it, and then Sandor had wiped his hand over his face like . . . like . . .

 

“And what?” Jaime asked, noticing how she had trailed off.

 

“And maybe he’s different now,” Brienne added unsurely, wondering how convincing the words sounded to Jaime’s ears.

 

“Men don’t change,” Jaime told her.

 

Brienne raised her eyebrows. “You changed,” she said.

 

Jaime was silent again. He was going to hate her for that later, but she had to remind him of it since he very clearly seemed to have forgotten about it. Brienne made it her mission to remind Jaime of things he tried to forget. He wasn’t always the golden boy. He had some black marks on his past like anybody else, and she didn’t want him getting all high and mighty because he had taken the extra effort to turn over a new leaf.

 

He rolled his head over in her lap to look up at her. Jaime’s eyes were bleary and bloodshot, and he looked like shit. He pointed his finger up at Brienne. “Not him,” he said with a tone of finality to it.

 

Brienne swallowed past a catch in her throat brought on by her nervousness. If Jaime kept this up, he was going to put himself into a really bad corner he wouldn’t be able to get himself out of. Taking Jaime by the sides of his face, Brienne forced him to look at her without turning away. “Then, you need to leave Clegane alone,” she said firmly. “Stay away from him. Period. I don’t want to hear about how you’ve been following him again. Do you understand me?”

 

Jaime slowly nodded his head.

 

Brienne continued. “If this bothers you so much, then you need to go to Ned and Catelyn and discuss it with them,” she suggested. “Let them have a talk with Sansa about all of this, and leave all of this nonsense on their doorstep. They are her parents. Let them deal with it.”

 

Jaime made a pained expression at that. “I can’t go to her parents,” he said, shaking his head. “If I go to her parents, Sansa won’t trust me ever again. I’ll be the evil uncle who turned her in and left her to the sharks. It’ll send her running straight into Clegane’s open arms—the one place I _don’t_ want her to be.”

 

Brienne sighed in exasperation, and then she dropped her forehead right onto Jaime’s. “Jaime,” she said, “I love you, but this is ridiculous.”

 

“This is not ridiculous,” he argued in a small voice. “This is very serious—”

 

“This is ridiculous,” Brienne repeated. “She’s not even your niece.”

 

It was the wrong thing to say. Jaime pulled out of Brienne’s grasp and stood up again, snatching up his glass of liquor and pointing at her with the hand that held the cup. His face was livid and injured all at once, an expression Brienne had never seen on it very often, and she was trying to figure out what she could have said that would have upset him that much when he told her.

 

“Not all family is _blood_ ,” Jaime shot back, and then he turned around angrily and stormed out of the room. Brienne heard the bedroom door slam shut, and she jumped at the sound of it ringing through the hallway. Squeezing her eyes shut temporarily, Brienne pinched the bridge of her nose.

 

She rubbed her forehead again and shook her head to herself.

 

Brienne could only hope Jaime didn’t do anything incredibly stupid over all of this.

 

 


	11. That Girl is So Dangerous

_* * *_

 

As Sandor arrived home the evening after the bookstore, he realized for the second time in a row that Sansa had forgotten to give his jacket back to him and that he had forgotten to ask her about it. Sighing in frustration, he put down his things on the kitchen counter. He went into his room, changed into some exercise clothes, and then he went for a jog around the block as usual. Sandor tried his hardest not to think about the incident with Jaime Lannister at the bookstore. It had taken everything in his willpower not to jump the man right then and there, which would have been another mark on his record. Sandor had schooled himself into calmness as much as possible, and while he had done it partially for his own sake, he had done it also for the sake of everyone else at the table—especially for Sansa.

 

When he got back to his apartment, he took a shower and eyed the book on the counter. For some reason, Sansa had really wanted him to read it. Sandor wasn’t lying to her when he said he didn’t read anything. Honestly, he didn’t care too much for reading. It was boring, and he got fidgety just sitting there with a book in his hands. Sandor was a man of action, not of sitting, so reading never held much appeal to him. However, he had purchased the book for her sake and promised to give it a try. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be too boring that he chucked it out of the window and into the dumpster below.

 

Scooping up the book, Sandor took a seat and began to read. Somehow he managed to read all the way to page forty-seven before his leg began to get fidgety, and then he tossed the book down on the coffee table. It was like some ‘discover your life path’ shit that Elder Brother would tell him to read. As Sandor thought that, he felt a twitch at the corner of his mouth. The story wasn’t horrible or anything, but it really wasn’t Sandor’s cup of tea either. He took one last look at the book, shook his head, and then he got up to fix himself something to eat.

 

It wasn’t until later that night when he was laying down in bed that he remembered he told Sansa he would call her later. Cursing mentally at himself for forgetting, Sandor reached over to grab his phone from the nightstand and selected her number in his phone. Yes, her number was in his phone now. Fuck, when did that happen? Sandor shook his head at his thoughts. It wasn’t important, he told himself. It definitely didn’t matter unless he told himself it did, and it didn’t. It definitely didn’t.

 

It rang for a few times, and Sandor almost thought she was asleep already and he had called her way too late, until finally she answered the phone with the familiar _click_ of the line picking up on the other end. “Hello?” came Sansa’s hazy voice from the other side of the line, and that was when Sandor realized he had woken her up. He felt a little bad for it, too. He shouldn’t have called her so late, but he didn’t want her to think he had forgotten or not called on purpose.

 

“Did I wake you up?” Sandor asked her out loud.

 

“Oh, it’s _fine_ ,” Sansa answered him, drawling out the last word like she was stretching on her bed, and he heard her roll over on the other end, the sheets rustling with her movements. Sandor closed his eyes, and he shook his head again. _Don’t think about that_ , he told himself silently in his head.

 

“Are you sure?” he asked her, opening his eyes again.

 

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Sansa said quietly, and he heard her finally settling into a comfortable position, and Sandor wondered if she was lying on her back or on her side . . .

 

“ _Goddamn_ it,” Sandor swore out loud, and that grabbed Sansa’s attention.

 

“What is it?” Sansa asked all of a sudden, sounding more awake than before. Sandor heard more rustling like she was suddenly sitting up in her bed. Shit, did he just say that out loud? His eyes went wide at the realization. He did just say that out loud. _Fucking hell_ , Sandor thought. He covered his mouth temporarily unless it betrayed him again.

 

“Nothing,” Sandor answered her as quickly as possible when he removed his hand from his mouth. “Uh, just, uh, stubbed my toe in the dark. Yeah. Ouch. Sorry,” he said, lowering his voice at that. Sandor shut his eyes and shook his head at himself yet again. How many times was he going to shake his head at himself tonight? This was a fucking world record. It had to have been.

 

Sansa let out a little amused laugh on his behalf. “Well, don’t walk around in the dark,” she advised him.

 

“I wasn’t,” he said.

 

“You just said you were,” Sansa shot back, even more amused than before.

 

“I did, didn’t I?”

 

Sansa laughed again. “Yes,” she pointed out.

 

“Okay, I was,” Sandor admitted, even though it was a lie.

 

“Well,” Sansa said, laughing even more, “either you were or you weren’t . . . ”

 

 _Oh, great_ , Sandor thought. Now she was questioning him.

 

“I was,” Sandor repeated.

 

Sansa was quiet for a moment. “You’re _lying_ ,” she said.

 

“I’m not lying,” Sandor said calmly.

 

“Yes, you are,” Sansa said.

 

“No, I’m not.”

 

“Yes, you _are_.”

 

“I’m telling you, I’m not.”

 

“I know a lie when I _hear_ one,” Sansa shot back, laughing even harder this time. “What were you doing?”

 

“I wasn’t doing anything,” Sandor said, which was true enough. He had just been lying in bed, thinking about things he shouldn’t have been thinking about when it came to a certain redheaded teenager.

 

“What were you _doing_?”

 

 _I was thinking about you_ , Sandor thought to himself, but he didn’t say it out loud. No, he definitely didn’t say it out loud. However, there was a moment of pause on the other end of the line, and Sandor was beginning to wonder if Sansa had just hung up on him when she finally spoke again.

 

“ . . . What?” Sansa suddenly asked him, her voice really quiet.

 

“Hm, what?” Sandor asked right back, confused.

 

“What did you say?” Sansa asked him again, and her voice was much quieter this time.

 

Sandor felt the gears turning in his head. “I didn’t say anything,” he told her, but even he sounded unsure about it. He didn’t say anything, did he? He would have known if he had said something out loud. Sandor wasn’t the kind of man to just blurt things out. Well, actually, fuck. Now that he thought about it, it was just like him to blurt something out. _Oh fuck_ , he thought. _I didn’t say that out loud, did I?_

 

Sandor suddenly wished for a switch to turn his brain off because this phone conversation was not going according to plan.

 

“You said . . . ” Sansa’s voice trailed off. Sandor’s heart started to pound dangerously fast inside of his ribcage. He wanted her to drop it. _Don’t say it_ , he thought. _Whatever I said, don’t repeat it_. Let her think she misheard him or something, or they could just pretend it never happened because Sandor was not ready to deal with the consequences of his thoughts made manifest in any way, shape, or form. Sansa took a deep breath on the other end, and Sandor closed his eyes, waiting for the blow of reality to hit him hard in the face. “So,” Sansa said then, her voice still quiet, “what did you call me to talk about?”

 

Sandor pulled the phone away from his head long enough to take a deep breath. That was good because that was a close one. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he brought the phone back to his ear. “I just wanted to see when the next time was you were free,” Sandor told her, and Sansa was quiet on the other end for a while. He heard some rustling again.

 

“I’m always free,” she said softly, and maybe he was just imagining it, but in a way that almost sounded sultry. Sandor pulled the phone away from his ear again to stare at it like it was a fucking alien from outer space that just asked him to come over and have tea with it. He blinked a few times, ran his hand over his head, and stared up at the ceiling as he brought the phone back to his ear.

 

“How about Thursday again?” Sandor asked her, mentioning the same day as before because he wasn’t sure he could see her right before his meetings. If he went to the meetings a day or two after seeing her, he was sure Elder Brother would see the guilt written all over his face. Sandor wasn’t so sure he could deal with that. He wasn’t doing anything wrong per se, but there was guilt all the same because everything he was doing went against his own set of rules that he had put up for himself. Sandor was breaking every single one of them one after another, and he wasn’t stopping himself like he should have done from the beginning.

 

For starters, he should have never agreed to be friends with her. Being friends with her led to spending time with her, which led to getting to know her, which led to liking her . . . and looking at her . . . and realizing how pretty she was . . .

 

Sandor swore at himself in his thoughts once more and shut his eyes tightly. _Fuck, stop thinking about these things_ , he scolded himself mentally. He almost wanted to open his mouth to tell her never mind—that he didn’t want to be her friend anymore, that he didn’t even want to spend time with her, and that she better not fucking call him _ever_ again.

 

He almost did it. Sandor opened his mouth to say the words, and then he heard Sansa laugh quietly in the background noise of the phone, and it stopped him from saying anything at all.

 

“Sure,” Sansa said through the line, though he could have sworn with the way she said it she was right there next to him in the bed. “What time?”

 

Disturbed by his thoughts, Sandor wanted to end the call immediately. “Eight,” he said all of a sudden, having no idea why he picked that time. “See you then,” Sandor added quickly, and he hung up the phone before Sansa could even reply. Sandor threw his phone away from himself, not caring that it _clacked_ against the floor below as bounced away from him. He rolled over and shoved his face down in his pillow until he couldn’t breathe, and then he had to roll over onto his back just to come up for air once more.

 

 _What am I doing?_ Sandor thought as he stared at his ceiling, and it had to have been the millionth time he had asked himself that question in his head. The answer from before was still no longer convincing enough to satisfy him, though. He was digging himself deeper and deeper down a rabbit hole, and it was as if there was a force of gravity beating down on him that wouldn’t let him turn back and go the other way to escape. Maybe it was all in his head, and maybe there was a way out and he just wasn’t taking it.

 

He really wanted to see her again, though. That much Sandor could admit to himself, even if he couldn’t comfortably admit to anything else. He liked talking to her, and he enjoyed spending time with her. Sansa was intelligent. She was funny. She was beautiful. She had a lovely smile . . .

 

Sandor ground his teeth down painfully in his mouth. Those last two things were the types of thoughts he ought not to be thinking of, and he knew it, but he couldn’t shut his thoughts off. There wasn’t a light switch to his brain. It didn’t have an on and off button for these types of things. Was it even normal to think these things? Usually, Sandor avoided younger people, so he couldn’t say if it was normal to think of a teenager that way, but he knew it made him feel uncomfortable.

 

If it made him uncomfortable, why was he agreeing to see her yet again?

 

Before Sandor could question his own thoughts again, his phone began to ring from the floor below. Sandor’s eyes went wide, and he turned over in his bed to look over the edge at his phone as it rattled against the floor with each buzz and jingle. He stared at it for a long time, refusing to get up from the bed to answer it, until the phone finally stopped ringing and fell still against the floor.

 

Sandor rubbed the back of his neck, wondering if that was Sansa again. He had hung up abruptly on her. Maybe she was calling back because of that. If it was her, he didn’t want to talk to her again so soon, not with his thoughts running haywire like this. Sandor laid his head back down on the bed and closed his eyes, and suddenly, the phone began to ring again.

 

He cut his eyes angrily at the phone, waiting for it to stop ringing once more. It rang and rang and rang until it hit voicemail, and then it stopped with its noise. When Sandor closed his eyes again, the phone began to ring for a third time. Sandor swore aloud, getting up from his bed, and stormed over to the phone to scoop it up.

 

He looked at the phone number first. When he recognized it, a curious expression overtook his face. Sandor answered the phone call, slowly raising the phone to his ear.

 

“Hello?” he asked.

 

Sandor could barely hear anything with the thundering _boom boom-boom-boom_ music bass in the background, but he recognized the voice the same way he had recognized the number. It had been a long fucking time, but it hadn’t been that long.

 

“You’re going to have to speak up,” Sandor said. “I can’t hear you over the damn music.”

 

While the music didn’t die down, the voice went up.

 

“Yeah,” Sandor agreed. “Long time, no see. What is it?”

 

Sandor listened in silence at the response, but that had gotten his attention for sure.

 

“Go on,” Sandor said slowly.

 

When he heard the proposition in full, his surprise was obvious. He was silent for some time, trying to soak it all in, and then when the voice from the other end urged for an answer, Sandor found his own voice again.

 

“How do I know you’re not fucking with me?” Sandor asked, trying to be skeptical just for the sake of appearances. It was good to at least keep those up. He couldn’t have people thinking he just jumped on everything.

 

Sandor was answered with a jovial laugh, following the real response.

 

“When should I come by?” he asked.

 

He was given a date, but that wasn’t a good day for him.

 

“I can’t do Tuesday,” Sandor said. “I work Tuesday night.”

 

The person offered a second day.

 

Sandor shook his head at that one as well, even though the person couldn’t see it. “I can’t do that either,” he said. “Wednesdays are booked for me.”

 

He was given one more possible day, and fuck, it was Thursday.

 

Sandor was quiet for a long time. He told Sansa he would see her again on Thursday, and Sandor didn’t want to go back on his word. It would break the girl’s heart, and she was so sensitive. Sandor wondered if that was why he couldn’t end this thing between him and her—because he didn’t want to be responsible for making her upset or making her cry. Some part of him knew, if he did it, how it would affect her, and he didn’t want to be responsible for that if he could help it.

 

“I’ll have to call you back later,” Sandor said to the person on the other end of the line, and he was given a very simple response.

 

The other person laughed yet again in that same silly way of theirs and hollered over the music, “Don’t make me wait, sugar.”

 

The line clicked dead, and Sandor took the phone away from his ear. The screen flashed, glowing blue for a moment before it died off, and Sandor slowly walked over to his nightstand to put his phone down on it. He stared at it. For how long, he wasn’t sure. It was an offer, that was for sure, but was it an offer he should pass up? Sandor debated over it for a while, and when he grew tired of thinking, he made his way into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water to drink as he leaned against his counter.

 

He wasn’t going to cancel his time with Sansa for this, though. Maybe he could just see her, drop her off at a decent time, and then go take care of this. It wasn’t everyday that an opportunity like this came up, anyway, and he was an idiot if he didn’t take it while it was offered to him before the other person changed their mind about it. Sandor finished his glass of water before putting the cup in the sink, and then he crossed his apartment back to his bedroom. He lay back down on his bed and closed his eyes, willing himself to go to sleep already.

 

Sandor was tired, and after the day he had because of Jaime Lannister, the thing he needed most in the world right now was some decent fucking sleep.

 

 


	12. Make Them Good Girls Go Bad

_* * *_

 

Instead of going to the beach or to the bookstore this time, Sandor surprised Sansa with something new. He drove her over to this cute little bar and grill over on Sunspear Avenue that served the best Dornish cuisine in town, and the whole place was lit up with little strings of lights like it was Christmas time. The wires of tiny light bulbs were wound all around the iron lattice work of the outside patio dining area, giving it the feel of having a million colorful stars showering down on you while you were eating. Sansa was in _love_ with it. It was beautiful. She couldn’t stop staring at the lights, and one time Sandor had to pass his hand in front of her face just to get her attention back to him. Sansa laughed and apologized, but he said it was all right.

 

When they were almost done eating, Sandor’s phone began to buzz. He took it out of his pocket to look at it, and he stared at it for a moment, but then he ignored it and put it down on the table by his plate. Sansa stared at his phone, wondering who was calling him. It wasn’t that she was trying to be nosey, but Sandor had a curious expression on his face like he was apprehensive to answer the call, and Sansa just wondered who could possibly spur a reaction like that in him. Also, if she admitted it to herself, some small part of her was afraid that it was a woman. What if it was an ex or something like that, trying to bug him? Sansa felt a sudden shot of jealousy go straight into her heart at that thought, and she clutched at the hem of her skirt under the table with nervous, fidgety fingers.

 

“Who’s that?” Sansa suddenly dared to venture, raising her eyes from his phone to look at Sandor. He looked up at that, lifting his eyebrows, but otherwise didn’t look shocked or upset at her question.

 

“Uh, it’s nobody,” Sandor said simply, but there was a note of hesitation in his voice, and then he went back to eating again. Sansa caught the note of hesitation, and suddenly, she was even more afraid than before. It _was_ a girl, she thought. She could read it on his face. After all, they were just friends, and this wasn’t a date. Or was it? Sansa was so confused half of the time. She had thought that night he called her a week ago that he had said over the phone _thinking about you_ , or had she just misheard the words? Did he really say that, or had he just said something else altogether, or had he said nothing at all and her mind had somehow conjured up the whole situation out of thin air?

 

Sandor had told her he said nothing, and then he asked when she was free again, and Sansa was beginning to think by now they were dating—but she didn’t want to _call_ it dating without knowing that’s what it was for sure because what if _he_ didn’t think of it as dating but then she _did_ , and then _everything_ got ruined based on assumptions that were never validated to begin with? Sansa put her chin in her hand, her eyes wide with confusion, and sighed deeply at herself.

 

Sandor looked up from his meal again, pausing with his fork halfway up to his mouth. “What is it?” he asked her, and Sansa felt her eyes go wider before she dropped her hand and shook her head.

 

“Oh, nothing,” she said, but Sandor gave her a look across the table like he knew something was up. Sansa, however, realized she was not ready to validate this assumption out loud, and she smiled nervously at him and shook her head yet again. “I promise,” Sansa added, and then she looked down at the patterns on the pretty tablecloth and traced her finger over one of them. “It’s nothing.”

 

Sandor’s phone buzzed again on the table, and he looked down at it again. Sansa raised her eyes once more to watch him and his reaction. Sandor stared at it in silence for a moment, and then he put down his fork and scooped up the phone. He looked at Sansa across the table. “I’ll be right back,” Sandor said. “I’ve got to answer this.”

 

Sansa watched helplessly as he got up from the table and walked out of the dining patio to the sidewalk beyond it, a good distance away from her. She wanted to call him back to the table, tell him not to talk to whoever that was, but she knew it was hopeless and she couldn’t tell him to do anything. When Sandor picked up the phone and brought it to his ear, Sansa finally looked away from him. What if he was talking to some pretty, _older_ woman right now? He would forget all about her, bring her back home, and drop her off with her parents where she belonged. Sansa’s fingers clutched at the tablecloth, and she felt tears stinging her eyes.

 

She wasn’t hungry anymore, so she stopped eating and stared down at the table. All of her happiness was gone. Eventually, Sandor came back to the table. His phone was back in his pocket because he didn’t put it down on the table. When he noticed Sansa across the table and her altered mood, he was quiet and still at first. “Hey,” he called out, and he leaned over the table. “Sansa, are you okay?”

 

Sansa cleared her throat and nodded quickly. When she looked up, she forced a smile. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, but she wasn’t and she wondered if he even noticed.

 

Sandor’s face gave nothing away. “Well, look, I’ve got some business I’ve got to take care of—”

 

Sansa swallowed past a catch in her throat. “You’re going to bring me home, aren’t you?” she asked suddenly, cutting Sandor off, and she couldn’t hold back the hurt tone in her voice from him this time.

 

Sandor blinked at her, confusion filling his features, and then he opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but nothing came out. He seemed caught off guard by her reaction, and he closed his mouth as he regarded her silently across the table for a few moments. Sandor looked away from her like he was debating something inside of his head that he wasn’t going to share with Sansa, and when he looked at her again, he leaned back against his chair. “Do you want to come with me?” Sandor suddenly asked her, and Sansa was so floored by the question that her eyes went wide and she leaned back in her chair as well.

 

“What do you mean?” Sansa asked him, suddenly not afraid anymore. If he was going to see another girl, then he wouldn’t bring _her_ along with him. “Where are you going?”

 

Sandor bit his lips together, and then he got up from the table. He dropped the bills down for the meal and tip and made a motion with his head for her to follow him. “Come on,” he said, and Sansa got up from the table as well and joined Sandor by his side as he led her out of the patio of the bar and grill and back to his car. Sansa got in the passenger seat and buckled up, and Sandor cranked the car. He drove off down Sunspear Avenue and past various different sites and streets until he turned onto one called Blackfyre Boulevard. It was a large and flashy area, and Sansa had never actually been to it before, but she had heard about it from everybody.

 

He parked the car not too far from a tall red building in a square that was lit up like New Year’s Eve. Sansa was apprehensive, but she was also very intrigued, and she wondered what sort of business brought Sandor out here. When she looked over at him with a quizzical look on her face, Sandor smiled crookedly at her.

 

“Come on,” he said again, doing that same motion with his head for her to follow him, and Sansa was beginning to feel a little bit like a puppy on a leash with the way she trailed behind Sandor everywhere he went. He exited the car, and she got out and walked around to the other side to join him. Sandor didn’t take her by the hand, but he took her by the arm, and then he led the way to the building ahead of them.

 

When Sansa looked up to see all of it, her jaw nearly dropped to the pavement. It was an enormously large structure of red brick done up almost like a castle with strobes of blue and white light flashing out of the windows and openings everywhere that she could see. Loud music reverberated from within the building, shaking the very street outside. There was a huge sign out front on the street that said _Maegor’s Holdfast_. Below that, the sign read _Thursday Night: Ladies’ Night First Drink Free_.

 

Sansa’s eyes went wide at the sign. She knew this place. It was a nightclub. Margaery went here all of the time, but Margaery was eighteen and Sansa was only seventeen. There was no way they would ever allow her past the doors. She was beginning to understand why Sandor had been thinking about bringing her home earlier. How did he even expect to get her through the front door? Before she could ask him this question, Sandor walked right up to the door, bypassing the entire line waiting outside in the chilly night air, and greeted the man at the front. The bouncer took one look at Sansa, and Sandor said, “She’s with me.”

 

The bouncer nodded his head and backed up to let them pass. Sansa’s eyes went wide, and she looked back at the bouncer as Sandor led her towards the door. Sansa quickly looked ahead of herself again, not wanting to trip on anything because she wasn’t watching where she was going. How was it _that_ easy? He didn’t even ask for her ID.

 

Sansa’s eyes went even wider once they were inside. The music was absolutely deafening. It pounded against the walls and floor. The lights flashed blue and white with spotlights and strobe lights, turning the sea of bodies beyond it into an undulating wave that seemed to skip. Sansa knew it was only a trick on the eyes, but it made her feel seasick.

 

That was when Sansa realized Sandor’s hand was on her back. He was touching her back. She felt her heart pounding in her chest, and she leaned into his side, looking out on the crowd. Sandor stopped, and he seemed to be looking around for somebody or something, and then he looked down at her. Sandor leaned down close to her ear so she could hear him when he spoke, his hand grasping her shoulder. “I’ve got to go find somebody,” he said loudly. “Can you wait here at the bar?”

 

Sansa nodded her head without saying anything at first, and then she realized she ought to say something. Sandor’s close proximity was unnerving her. She could smell his aftershave lotion, the same one that was on his jacket that she had been sleeping with every single night since he forgot it with her that first night. Sansa turned her head so her mouth was near his ear as well. “Okay,” she said loudly, hoping he heard her. He did, because when he leaned back, he gave her an appreciative gaze, and then he led her over to the bar by the arm.

 

Sansa sat down in one of the stools, and Sandor leaned in close to her ear again, putting his hand on the counter. “Stay here,” he said, raising his voice the same way he had before, and she felt him shake his head. “Don’t go _anywhere_.”

 

Inexplicably, Sansa thought about leaning in and kissing his ear. Her eyes went wide at her thought, and she felt her body tense up at it. Sandor pulled back from her, and she nodded her head at him this time. His hand touched her arm once more, and then he turned away from her, stepped off the raised dias of the bar, and disappeared into the crowd below. Sansa watched as he disappeared into the crowd before she swirled the stool around to face the bar again. She fidgeted with the counter all alone for a while, trying to occupy herself with her thoughts, which weren’t many, until a young man appeared behind the counter and came up to her.

 

“Can I get you anything, miss?” he asked, and Sansa glanced up suddenly. She almost told him that she couldn’t drink, that she wasn’t old enough to drink, until she realized that would get her kicked out of the nightclub. Sansa swallowed nervously, and then she found herself nodding her head instead.

 

“Sure,” she said. “What have you got?”

 

He grinned at her. He was kind of cute, young and blonde, but very short. “First drink is free,” he said, “but I’ll make you something _good_.”

 

Sansa watched as he mixed her drink, and the end result was something that looked a lot like pink lemonade with a dash of orange to it. It was garnished with a piece of fruit. He handed it to her, and Sansa sniffed it at first. “What is it?” she asked, looking up from the rim.

 

The man grinned at her again. “Liquid Cocaine,” he said. “Try it. You’ll like it. Trust me.”

 

Sansa wasn’t so sure she should be drinking anything called Liquid Cocaine, but of course she knew it didn’t really have cocaine in it. It was just a name. She wondered why it was called that, and she took a hesitant sip. It didn’t taste all that bad, though. It wasn’t as strong as she thought it should be. Before Sansa knew it, she was drinking it like it was just tea. “It tastes good,” she hollered to the man behind the bar, and he grinned again.

 

When Sansa finished it, she found she wanted more. “Can I have another one?” she asked, and he made her another one. Sansa put her bills down on the counter. She was starting to feel _really_ good. She nearly fell out of the stool, though, as she swayed back and forth to the music. Sansa grabbed the counter to stay herself.

 

“Be careful!” the man behind the counter laughed at her.

 

“Why’s it called Liquid Cocaine?” Sansa hollered at him, curious to know the reason behind the name. The world swayed before her vision, but she really didn’t care. She felt _wonderful_. She started bouncing in her seat again.

 

“Because you won’t remember shit in the morning!” the man told her, laughing, and Sansa found herself laughing right along with him. That was _funny_. God, it was so _wonderful_. Sansa gulped down more as she danced in her seat. She started singing along to the newest song they were playing, but she kept messing up the lyrics and slurring them together.

 

“What’s _in_ it?” Sansa hollered to the man behind the counter. “It’s _amazing_!”

 

“151 rum!” the man told her over the music. “It’s 75.5 proof alcohol! Some of the strongest shit there is!”

 

“I _love_ it,” Sansa told him, leaning over the counter, and she nearly spilled what little was left of her second drink. “Oh, shit—”

 

“Whoa, watch it!” the blonde man called out. “Don’t waste good alcohol!”

 

Sansa laughed like crazy at that. “I won’t!” she hollered, and she shook her head really fast, which made her feel extremely dizzy and kind of sick. Sansa stilled for a moment, and then she finished what was left of her drink. She paid for a third one, still wanting more because it tasted _so_ good. She couldn’t even taste the alcohol anymore. The man made her a third one, and Sansa was halfway through it when the world started to bleed together around her and everything was swaying.

 

A new song started to pound through the club, the bass reverberating through the floor and right up to Sansa’s toes, making her shiver. It was a pop song this time. Sansa closed her eyes, listening to the music. _Look at him, look at me_ , the voice sang, _that boy is bad, and honestly, he’s a wolf in disguise, but I can’t stop staring in those evil eyes_. Sansa opened her eyes again. She started to feel really, really _sick_. Her stomach was churning. Sansa didn’t mean to, but the drink slipped out of her hands and spilled all over the floor, but nobody noticed it. She barely even noticed it.

 

 _I asked my girlfriend if she’d seen you around before_. Sansa found herself getting up from the stool, but she stumbled and almost fell, just barely catching herself on the stool and not landing on the floor. _She mumbled something while we got down on the floor, baby_. Sansa slipped then, and she hit the floor. Her palms braced her fall, though. _We might’ve fucked, not really sure, don’t quite recall_. Everything came heaving up all of a sudden, and Sansa tried to cover her mouth. _But something tells me that I’ve seen him, yeah_. It didn’t help. She moved her hand away and vomited all over the floor in front of her. _That boy is a monster_ , the singer’s voice echoed all around her. _That boy is a monster . . ._

 

Sansa heard a sudden commotion around her, but the music kept beating into her ears, and it blocked out half of it with the pound of the bass through the floor. She felt it under her palms and knees.

 

“What the _fuck_ did you give her!” Sansa heard a voice growl aloud, and she thought the voice sounded familiar, but she couldn’t be sure . . .

 

“I just gave her a drink! She paid for it!”

 

“What the _hell_ is going on here?” demanded a third voice, and it sounded familiar, too . . .

 

Sansa closed her eyes, feeling woozy. The world was all bleeding together. The floor didn’t even look like a floor anymore. It looked like a wiggling sea before her, and Sansa was afraid she was going to fall right into the water. _He licked his lips and said to me_ , echoed the singer’s voice once more. _Girl, you look good enough to eat_. Sansa felt a strong pair of arms go around her, picking her up. _Put his arms around me_ . . .

 

Sansa didn’t know who it was, though, and she struggled against it. _Said, boy, now get your paws right off of me_. “No, let me go—”

 

“Sansa,” came his voice through the fog, and Sansa knew his voice. “Hey—”

 

“You fucking brought Sansa Stark into _my_ club?” the third voice shouted. “What the _fuck_ is wrong with you? Get her out of here _now_! Do you _think_ I want Jaime Lannister up my arse until next season? And _you_! You’re fucking fired, you incompetent prick! Get the fuck out of my club right along with them!”

 

Sansa knew that voice, too. She swore she knew it, but Sandor didn’t answer the man. Sandor scooped her up in his arms, and she felt the sway of the world as he was walking. She squeezed her eyes shut and laid her head against his chest. The world still swayed, even with them closed, and she made a whining noise in the back of her throat.

 

“Oh, please don’t throw up on me,” Sandor said somewhere above her, and Sansa whined again in response, incapable of words just yet.

 

She felt the cool night air strike her face and arms, and it wasn’t long before she found herself laying down on something. It took Sansa a moment to register it was the backseat of a car, and then she felt the movement of the vehicle, and her stomach churned fresh all over again. Sansa closed her eyes and willed the sickness away, putting her hands over her mouth and holding them there tightly. She didn’t want to throw up again. She did _not_ want to throw up again.

 

When the vehicle stopped, she heard Sandor’s voice say, “Hey, it’s me.” He scooped her up again, and she didn’t protest this time. He carried her for some distance. She didn’t remember the hallway, but she remembered the elevator. He struggled between balancing her and getting the keys in the door. Sansa heard them jingling. Once they were inside, Sansa heard the door get kicked shut. She heard the keys hit something, jingle once more, and then silence.

 

“I think I’m going to be sick—” Sansa said, and he wasted no time getting her to the bathroom.

 

Sansa was leaned over the toilet, her knees on the floor. Sandor threaded his fingers through her hair to gather it all together, his fingers running over her scalp, before he pulled her hair taut atop her head as he helped her lean over the toilet. It helped keep her hair out of her face as Sansa heaved out the contents of her stomach, her eyes watering and stinging, her throat burning. Sansa realized somewhere amidst it all she was crying because, god, how embarrassing was this? Why was he helping her? Most people threw up on their own without anybody’s help.

 

“Can I be _alone_?” Sansa managed to ask between heaves, gulping for air. She felt Sandor pressed against her as he held her upright over the toilet. His free hand was on her back as well, occasionally rubbing and occasionally patting.

 

“What, so you can drown in my toilet?” Sandor asked her, sounding annoyed. “You aren’t the first person I’ve held puking above a toilet bowl, you know.”

 

Sansa cried harder, heaving once more.

 

“Come on,” he coaxed, his voice gentler this time. “Let it out.” Sandor patted her back again, and Sansa felt him twist her long hair around his hand to wind it out of the way.

 

“I have to go home—” Sansa managed to say. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew she had to go home.

 

“Oh, fuck, no,” Sandor told her. “I’m not taking you home like this. I’d have to carry you through the front door and explain myself to your parents.”

 

“I can’t stay _here_ —” Her parents were going to kill her. They were going to kill her if she didn’t show up at home until _tomorrow_.

 

“Well, too bad,” Sandor said. “You’re going to have to. Should have thought about that before you drank.”

 

Sansa finished heaving out the rest of the contents of her stomach until there was nothing left to come up. When her body descended into nervous little shocks, she leaned back against him. “I have to . . . I have to . . . I have to shower,” she slurred, and Sansa grabbed at the hem of her shirt to pull it up, completely oblivious to the implications of undressing in front of him with her state of mind. Sandor immediately snatched her wrists and stopped her.

 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said quickly. “Stop that. You’re not taking a shower in your condition.”

 

“But I _have_ to,” Sansa whined. “I’m _gross_.”

 

“Well, be gross ‘til morning,” Sandor argued back.

 

“I can’t,” she moaned, and Sansa leaned forward away from him and reached for the hem of her shirt again. Sandor snatched her wrists a second time.

 

“Fucking hell, stop _that_!” he barked, angry with her.

 

Sansa fell back against him, her head resting back on his shoulder. She turned her head to look at Sandor. From here, she could smell his aftershave lotion. “You smell good,” Sansa said aloud instead of just thinking it, and she leaned her face into his neck, her hand reaching up to cup the other side. She rubbed her hand gently against his neck as her nose brushed against his skin. Sandor fell completely still in her arms, so Sansa closed her eyes. She was ready to go to sleep.

 

When he had noticed her stillness, he must have scooped her up because Sansa found herself in his arms again. Sandor was carrying her somewhere once more. Sansa wondered where he was carrying her to—a bed, hopefully. Sansa really wanted a bed right about now. She wanted a shower more, but she would settle for a bed.

 

Sandor laid her down, but it wasn’t on a bed. It was his couch. She opened her eyes blearily from where she lay, and she saw Sandor pointing a finger at her. “Stop trying to undress,” he told her firmly. “You’re not taking a shower, and you’re not going home. You’re going to go to fucking sleep.” He vanished from her line of sight for a while, but when he came back, he had a few things with him.

 

“Lift your head,” he said, and she obeyed him. Sandor stuffed a pillow under it. He draped a blanket over her next, and then he held up the third object for her to get a good look at it. “You see this?” he asked her.

 

It was a little plastic bucket. In fact, it looked like one of those plastic gallon ice cream buckets from the grocery store. Sansa stared at it for a moment, and then she nodded her head.

 

“If you need to throw up again,” Sandor said slowly, and he shook the bucket once for emphasis, “use this.” He put the bucket down beside the couch on the floor close to where she laid her head. “Please, don’t puke on my floor. Or my couch.”

 

“I’ll try not to,” Sansa said softly.

 

Sandor stood there, staring at her. He came closer for a moment, and Sansa felt his hand pass over her forehead. “Get some sleep,” he told her, and then he disappeared from her line of sight around the side of the couch. Sansa heard his footsteps retreating, and she wondered where he was going. To bed, probably. Sansa frowned to herself. Why did he get the bed, and she get the couch? That wasn’t fair.

 

But Sansa didn’t have much energy to argue because the moment she closed her eyes, the world went black.

 

 


	13. Here Come the Men in Black

_* * *_

 

Jaime was flicking the pencil back and forth between his fingers, staring down at a page in an open booklet on his desk amongst the pile of paperwork that he had no idea where to even begin with. In an effort to make things up to Brienne, he had agreed to ask to be assigned onto desk duty for three weeks at the office. He had really pissed her off last night, and their head to head had accumulated into another fight some time after he had slammed the bedroom door shut, locked it, and refused to open it for her. Brienne, despite her hardest effort to remain the calm one, finally screamed at him and threatened to move out if Jaime didn’t cut it out immediately.

 

Scared to death of losing her, Jaime had said he would agree to anything she wanted to ask of him. Brienne had stared him down with that cool, calculated look of hers, and had asked, “Anything?” Jaime had known exactly what was coming next after that. She had demanded that he ask to be assigned to desk duty for a few weeks. Jaime had picked three instead of two to show her just how much he meant it. He wanted this to work, and he was making his hardest effort at it. Desk duty was going to kill him, though. Jaime liked being out where the action was the thickest, not cooped up in some dingy little cubicle with a pile of paperwork seventy stories high. This was not his idea of a dream job.

 

Right now, though, he was actually ignoring the paperwork, and the booklet he was studying had absolutely nothing to do with work. As he continued to flick his pencil back and forth, Jaime eyed the puzzle in front of him. He even squinted his eyes as if that would somehow make the answer more visible to him. Finally, picking up the crossword puzzle booklet, he leaned back in his chair past the wall of his cubicle to the workspace next to his own.

 

“Hey, Varys,” Jaime called out, peeking over at the other cubicle. “What’s a ten-letter word for claustrophobic that begins with ‘o’?”

 

Varys leaned back in his chair past the wall separating their cubicles as well, his eyebrows raised up in thoughtful contemplation. “Oppressive?”

 

Jaime thought about it for a moment, counted the letters, and made a clicking noise with his tongue. “Good man, Varys,” he said, scribbling down the word in the boxes provided on the sheet. “I knew I could count on you.”

 

Varys gave a little grin at that, and then he wiggled his eyebrows. “When can you not?” Varys asked.

 

“Exactly,” Jaime said, shooting an award-winning grin at the other man with a matching twinkle in his eyes. Varys specialized with the informants in the department, and he had a mind like a whip. If Jaime ever had a question about anything, he took it to Varys, even if it was just a crossword puzzle question. After all, those could be important too. They saved Jaime’s sanity on more than one occasion in the past, and they were saving it today as well. This cubicle business was already wearing on him, and he had only been assigned to it for one day so far.

 

This was going to be a long three weeks.

 

Jaime righted his chair again and bent over his desk with the booklet, pondering over the clues and scribbling in more answers and occasionally leaning back over to consult Varys’s pool of knowledge, when someone walked up to his cubicle and slapped their hand against the wall of it to get his attention. Jaime looked up immediately, narrowing his eyes when he saw that it was Loras Tyrell.

 

“What is it?” Jaime asked him curtly. He still had a strong urge to shove a baton up Loras’s ass—and in a _completely_ non-sexual and very violent way.

 

Loras, however, was the picture perfect image of professionalism today. “Someone is here to see you,” Loras informed Jaime. “Two people in particular, actually. They said it was very urgent, and they had to speak to you immediately.”

 

“Who is it?” Jaime asked, unfazed by this specific bit of news.

 

“Eddard and Catelyn Stark,” Loras said.

 

Jaime’s eyes went wide. Now, _that_ got his attention. He stood up straight away, pushing his chair away from himself. “What is it?” Jaime demanded, his voice on edge. This was the worst possible timing. He was on desk duty now, even if something had happened he wouldn’t be able to leave the station. “Why are they here?”

 

Loras sighed as if he thought everything he was about to say was absolutely stupid. “They want to file a missing persons report,” Loras told him, “but the department rules are twenty-four hours, and it’s only been twelve hours. They’re insisting their daughter is missing because she didn’t come home last night and she isn’t answering her cell phone, but come on, she’s a teenager.” Loras shrugged his shoulders. “I did that shit all the time when I was her age.”

 

“Where are they?” Jaime asked. “Take me to them.”

 

Loras guided Jaime through the station to Ned and Catelyn Stark, who were sitting in the waiting area of the main office. Both of them immediately rose to their feet upon seeing Jaime, and Catelyn rushed towards him, though Ned’s footsteps were slow and careful as usual.

 

“Jaime, _please_ ,” Catelyn said, begging him, “Sansa is missing, and these _fools_ won’t do anything about it.”

 

“We’ve tried calling her phone all night,” Ned told Jaime, and he shook his head slowly. “There has been no answer. It’s gone to voicemail every time. She has not even bothered to send us a text back. There has been nothing at all. This isn’t like Sansa, Jaime.” Ned shook his head again, and though he was calm, he looked anxious underneath the surface.

 

“You must _do_ something, Jaime,” Catelyn begged of him, her eyes wide and full of fear, and Jaime could see that she had been crying. Catelyn’s eyes were bloodshot. Jaime inwardly cursed at Brienne for her inopportune timing on promises. There was no way he could go back on his word with Brienne. Jaime would have to find a way around this, which he knew he could do, and he was already beginning to form a plan in his head.

 

Jaime reached out to take Catelyn’s hand into his own, grasping it with one as he placed his other hand on top. He gave her a firm grip of assurance, feeling the tautness of her nerves beneath his hands. “I will do what is in my power to find her,” Jaime told Catelyn, looking her directly in the eyes. “I’ve been assigned to desk duty, so I can’t leave the station, but I know someone I can trust that I can send out to look for her. Consider it a favor. Non-repayable.”

 

Catelyn’s stricken expression softened at that, her eyes watering with fresh tears as she smiled at him. “You are an _angel_ , Jaime,” Catelyn said, gripping his hands back with the force of iron in her knuckles. It hurt, but Jaime wasn’t going to complain. The woman was strong for her size and age. Jaime hoped there never came a day when he pissed her off because he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out just what she could do to him.

 

After he had reassured Ned and Cat, he turned away from them and looked for Loras Tyrell. The boy wanted to prove himself, so Jaime was going to give him a damn task to prove himself. He found Loras over by the water cooler, pouring himself a small paper cup of ice cold water to drink.

 

“Loras,” Jaime called out.

 

Loras looked up as he took a sip of water from the cup. When he lowered the cup, he raised his eyebrows. “Yeah?” he asked.

 

“I need you to do something for me,” Jaime told him, closing the distance between them. Jaime lowered his voice so no one around them would hear what he was about to say. “I’m on desk duty, so I can’t leave the station, but I need you to check on something for me.” Jaime leaned in closer, pausing for a moment before he spoke again. “Go over to Sandor Clegane’s residence, and check things out there,” Jaime said. “I have reason to believe Clegane is somehow involved in Sansa Stark’s disappearance.”

 

Loras looked taken aback at this revelation, and he gaped at Jaime before shaking his head. “Are you serious?” he asked, sounding a little unnerved by the news. Loras leaned back a little bit. “Wait, how do you know this for sure?”

 

“Trust me,” Jaime said, giving Loras a look that left nothing up to debate, and he put his hand on Loras’s shoulder with a firm grip. “You have to get over there as soon as possible, and let me know what you find out.”

 

“What if she’s not there?” Loras asked him, shrugging his shoulders.

 

“Then look for her, find her, and bring her home safely,” Jaime urged, “and I’ll _owe_ you.”

 

Loras seemed to be contemplating this for a moment. His eyes narrowed somewhat as he cocked a single eyebrow upwards. “You’ll owe me?”

 

Jaime returned the same look back to Loras, clapping the other man on the arm. “Don’t push your luck,” Jaime said with a tight smile.

 

Loras sighed. “All right,” he said, “I’ll do it.” He pointed his finger at Jaime, though. “But you owe me. Remember that. Donuts and coffee maybe one day.”

 

“Donuts and coffee I can do,” Jaime replied, and Loras clapped him back on the arm as well before he tipped his head at Jaime and walked right past him. Jaime watched as Loras headed towards the exit of the police station.

 

 _Please_ , Jaime thought, _find her_.

 

 


	14. The Vacancy That Sat in My Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** Lordy, only I could turn a drunken nightclub outing into a Blackwater reference. Ten points to whoever catches it in this chapter!

_* * *_

 

As the next morning rolled around outside of his window, Sandor opened his eyes to the new day and blinked them a few times, waiting on his brain to catch up with the rest of him. He sat up in bed and ran his hands over his face, briefly remembering the events of last night. At the moment, though, he really didn’t want to think about them. Sandor threw back the sheet, the only thing he managed to not kick off during the night, and walked to the door of his room. He had left it open last night to keep an ear on Sansa in case she got sick during the night, but he never heard anything after he had put her down on the couch and went to bed himself.

 

Normally, he only slept in boxers, but last night he threw on a white t-shirt as well. Sandor hadn’t felt comfortable sleeping half naked in bed with Sansa out in his living room, his door wide open. He walked around the corner outside of his bedroom and down the short hall towards the bathroom, opening the door and shutting it behind himself. Sandor never bothered with closing the bathroom door. He always left it open, but Sansa was out in his living room on this particular morning, and he wasn’t about to take a leak with the door wide open.

 

It was stuffy inside of the bathroom. Sandor lifted the toilet set, taking care of his business, and flushed before going to the sink. He turned on the faucet when his eyes caught sight of his bottle of aftershave lotion out on the counter, wide open with the cap lying down beside it. Sandor narrowed his eyes in confusion, picked it up, and stared at it. He hadn’t used any aftershave lotion last night. What was it doing out this morning? Sandor screwed the cap back on and put it away. He went to grab his toothbrush—and found it wet.

 

“What the hell?” Sandor said out loud, and then it dawned on him. Sansa had already woken up, and clearly, she had used his toothbrush. Remembering the puke from last night, Sandor made a face and threw the toothbrush down on the counter, and then he fished through his cabinet for an unopened double pack of toothbrushes he knew was around here somewhere. He usually had doubles of everything these days; not only that, but Sandor had become very habitual and stuck with routine like it was his lifeblood these days as well. It was all part of some weird fucking obsessive–compulsive thing he had developed ever since he stopped drinking.

 

Elder Brother had said he was trying to subconsciously replace one addiction with another, but Sandor thought that was bullshit.

 

As he was rummaging through his cabinet, Sandor heard a splash from within the tub a few feet away. He froze, his eyes widening. He did not just imagine that splash. That was a real splash. Slowly, he started to turn his head towards the bathtub, but Sandor stopped himself a quarter ways there and looked in the opposite direction instead. The shower’s solid door was slid shut, but Sandor was sure he did not want to even see the fuzzy imprint of what lay inside of it.

 

“Sansa,” he ventured very carefully, “are you in there?”

 

“Yeah . . . ” echoed her exhausted voice through the shower door.

 

Sandor looked back in the cabinet, finally seeing the pack of toothbrushes, and snatched them. “I’m . . . leaving now,” he said all of a sudden, scooping up the toothpaste and abruptly turning for the door. Sandor exited the bathroom as fast as possible, shutting the door behind himself. He leaned against it, sighing deeply and closing his eyes. She could have _told_ him she was in there the moment she heard the door open. Why didn’t she say anything? She must have been really out of it still, Sandor thought. He ought to make her something to eat after all of the puking she did the other night. The corner of Sandor’s mouth twitched at that. He wasn’t much of a cook.

 

Maybe he could order takeout.

 

He went to the kitchen sink to brush his teeth, picked up the phone and ordered from this Italian place down the street. After that, Sandor went to his bedroom and changed into some clothes for the day. He settled for a simple pair of jeans and a red t-shirt. Sandor sat down on the edge of his bed to put on a pair of socks, and when he stood up again and glanced at the door, Sansa was standing there wrapped in nothing but a big towel that one of her hands was carefully holding around her chest, her hair wet and falling around her shoulders in dark tendrils.

 

“Do you have anything I can wear?” Sansa asked him quietly, lifting her other hand to hold up her clothes from last night. “My clothes have vomit on them,” she added in a soft voice, averting her gaze from his eyes. Sansa looked so embarrassed to confess it, her cheeks turning pink at her admission, despite the fact that he had been the one holding her over the toilet last night in the first place.

 

Sandor realized he was staring. He cleared his throat and looked away from her, walking over to the dresser. He searched through his things for the smallest sizes he could find, but it was all going to be too big on Sansa. It wasn’t like Sandor just had women’s clothing lying around his apartment. Settling on a pair of boxers that were tight on him, a pair of shorts that would look like pants on her, a belt, and a brown shirt that would be more like a dress on her frame, Sandor walked over to Sansa and handed her the clothes.

 

“Here you go,” he said, and Sansa took them from his hand with a shy smile on her face.

 

“Thank you,” she murmured, lowering her eyes yet again, and she bit down on her bottom lip. It was almost like she was too nervous to look at him. Sandor didn’t understand why.

 

He nodded his head once in a curt manner to accept her gratitude. Sandor kept his hand held out to her, though, and he lifted it a little higher to catch her attention. “I’ll take your other clothes,” he offered to her. “I can take them down to the laundry room and wash them.”

 

Sansa lifted her head, looking surprised at the offer. “Thank you,” she said in that same soft voice again, and she placed them in his outstretched hand. Sandor took them, and Sansa turned around to hurry back to the bathroom to change into the clean clothes he had given her. It would just be something to temporarily wear until hers were clean again. Sandor watched as Sansa disappeared behind the bathroom door, shutting it. He closed his eyes and shook his head at himself. Sandor ran his hand over his face, trying not to think of her changing, and exited his apartment to go down to the laundry room with her clothes. The sooner they were washed and dried, the sooner she could go home.

 

He did have that takeout coming up to the apartment, though. Some food in Sansa’s stomach before she left wouldn’t hurt her.

 

Sandor tossed her clothes in the wash on the shortest cycle, which was probably about six to ten minutes. As he sat down to wait for them, he replayed over last night’s events in his head. That had been a stupid fucking move, bringing her to the club. Sandor didn’t think Sansa would have grabbed at the first glass of liquor put before her, though. Sandor had figured he would get in, have his meeting, and get out with her just fine, nothing gone wrong. Renly, however, stumbled upon Sansa, underage and drunk in his club, and flipped out. Sandor wasn’t mad at the guy either. Renly had every fucking right to be pissed off about that. It wasn’t Sandor’s fault, though. Sansa had made that decision on her own. No one forced that drink down her throat.

 

Sandor had almost punched the bartender who had given Sansa the drinks merely out of principle—and, also, partially out of Sansa’s distress from being sick—but Renly had satisfied that urge by firing the guy. The prick deserved it. Who the fuck didn’t ask for ID before serving anything? If the person didn’t have gray hair, wrinkles, and a bent back, Sandor asked for a goddamn ID in his pub. It wasn’t that hard. It took five seconds of time to do it, and saved a whole lot of trouble from happening down the line.

 

There had been no hesitation in bringing her to his place. Sandor knew he couldn’t take her home like that. Sansa wouldn’t have been able to walk down the street to her house safely, and Sandor couldn’t walk right into her house with her in his arms either. His only choice had been to bring her over to his place and let her wait out the night there until she was sober again. Holding her over the toilet bowl had been nothing, but when Sansa tried undressing, Sandor’s nerves were shot to shit. He had stopped her immediately because there was no way in hell he was allowing her to strip down in _front_ of him, and there was also no way in hell he was going to let her take a shower or a bath while she was that intoxicated. She could have ended up drowning herself in his tub somehow, and he wasn’t about to let that happen on his watch.

 

And then, there was that other thing. She had touched him. Sansa had leaned back against him, her head on his shoulder, and snuggled her face into his neck as her fingers grazed along his throat. Sandor had fallen still at that because he liked the touch, which disturbed him afterwards, but also because it spiked his blood. No one had touched him like that in a very long time, even if she was just a drunken teenage girl, and Sandor had never been more grateful than for the moment when Sansa had fallen still against him like she was falling asleep.

 

He had scooped her up into his arms right then, intent on carrying her straight to his couch. There was no way in hell he was putting her in his bed, even if it would have been the gentlemanly thing to do for him to take the couch and give her his bed for the night. Sandor wasn’t sure he would ever be able to sleep again properly in his own bed if Sansa spent a night amongst his sheets. Besides, the couch wouldn’t kill her. It was comfortable and spacious enough for someone his size, so it was plenty big enough for her.

 

The cycle on the washer shut off, and Sandor threw her clothes into the dryer. He figured he could leave them down here to dry and go back up to the apartment. After all, the food might be there soon and he had to pay for it. As Sandor walked down the hallways and took the elevator up to his floor, he froze right after he walked around the corner towards his apartment.

 

Loras Tyrell was standing in uniform a few feet in front of his door, one of his hands resting idly on his duty belt. When Loras heard Sandor’s footsteps down the hallway, he turned around and spotted Sandor almost immediately. Loras aimed a warm smile in Sandor’s direction. “Hey,” Loras said casually. “I’ve been looking for you, Sandor. I knocked on your door a few times, but there was no answer. I almost figured I had missed you.”

 

 _Smart girl_ , Sandor thought. He was glad that Sansa hadn’t opened the door or said anything through it to Loras. He didn’t want anyone knowing she was here.

 

Sandor slowly approached the other man, keeping some distance between them. “What brings you out here, Loras?” Sandor asked him, and admittedly, his heart rate was way high at the sight of a police officer right outside of his apartment, even if it was just Loras Tyrell.

 

Loras pursed his lips for a moment, looking thoughtful, and then he slowly closed the distance between him and Sandor until there was barely a few inches of space between them. Loras cocked his head backwards and to the left a little bit to look up at Sandor’s face given their height difference, and then the younger man eyed Sandor with curiosity. “Is Sansa inside?” Loras asked him, lowering his voice.

 

Sandor gritted his teeth. “Renly has a big mouth,” he said.

 

Loras suddenly grinned at that, and the grin made him look boyish with those brown curls on his head. “Yes, he does,” Loras agreed, nodding, “but he does many wonderful things with it, and so I forgive him for it. Besides, it doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together. She came into Renly’s club last night with you, was last seen puking her guts out on the floor and being carried away in your arms, and suddenly she’s missing from home and her parents are worried sick.” Loras gave Sandor a pointed look when he was finished, his mouth curling upward at the corner into a little smirk. “Where else would she be?”

 

“Fuck,” Sandor swore, and he looked away from Loras for a moment. The boy had him there. When he glanced back at Loras, Sandor asked, “How worried are her parents?”

 

“Worried enough to want to file a missing persons report.”

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Sandor swore yet again, and Loras laughed at him.

 

“You have a very colorful vocabulary, I’ll give you that,” Loras said with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes and a boyish smile on his lips. “Anyway, Jaime is convinced she’s here and you’re responsible for her disappearance. He’s on desk duty now, so he asked me to come check it out.”

 

“And?” Sandor asked, wary of the answer.

 

Loras shrugged at that, and he almost looked bored. “I can take her home for you, save you the trouble,” Loras simply offered. “Come up with a story to explain where she was and why, and take the heat off you where Jaime is concerned, of course.”

 

Sandor let out a breath of air he hadn’t known he had been holding. “That would help out a lot,” he agreed. Sandor paused for a moment, though, realizing now wasn’t a good time for it. “But her clothes are downstairs in the laundry room right now, and I’ve got takeout on the way up.”

 

Loras grinned devilishly with that news, leaning in closer towards Sandor to push at his chest. “Sandor, you _dog_ ,” he jested, and Sandor whacked his hand away in annoyance, backing away from Loras to put some space between the two of them again. “What a night _she_ must have had—”

 

“Shut the fuck up, Loras.”

 

Loras raised his eyebrows, still grinning. “I’m not the one with a naked girl in my apartment.”

 

“She isn’t naked,” Sandor snapped. “She’s wearing my clothes.”

 

Loras’s eyes went wide at that, his grin surprised now. “Really? This just keeps getting better and better. Is she wearing one of your too big shirts like the morning after in every romantic comedy movie ever made—”

 

“Fucking _hell_ , Loras, cut it out!” Sandor growled, not amused with any of this.

 

Loras laughed out loud at Sandor’s reaction. “Oh, all right,” he conceded, shaking his head, but he was still grinning like mad. “Do you want me to come back later, then? Just give me a ring when she’s ready?”

 

Sandor’s jaw was still tight from annoyance, but he nodded his head. “Sure,” he said brusquely.

 

“Okay,” Loras said. “Will do. Oh,” he added suddenly, “Renly wanted to apologize for last night. He knows he got carried away, what with the cursing and the yelling and dramatics, but I’m sure you understand why, of course. He could lose his license over shit like that, or worse, get shut down. He’s very anal about the law when it comes to his club.”

 

Sandor gave a sardonic tight-lipped smile. “I hear he’s very anal about a lot of things,” he shot back.

 

Loras grinned wickedly. “That he is,” the younger man agreed. “Oh, how did, uh, your little meeting go? He hasn’t told me about it yet. Are you on board?”

 

“I haven’t decided yet,” Sandor answered him.

 

“Well,” Loras said, “when you do decide, let us know.” He grinned one last time at Sandor and turned to walk away. Sandor was silent at first, but then he called out to the younger man.

 

“Does he really deserve it?” Sandor suddenly asked. “He’s a prick, but . . . even this . . . ”

 

Loras stopped walking and turned back around to look at Sandor. The boy’s bright eyes suddenly turned dark as he regarded Sandor across the hall. “Getting a conscience, Clegane?”

 

“I’ve had one.”

 

“Oh,” Loras said flippantly, and he shrugged his shoulders as he glanced up at the ceiling for a moment, but then his eyes met Sandor’s across the distance again and Sandor didn’t like what he saw inside of them. “I hadn’t noticed,” Loras added. They stared at each other for a short while, and then Loras put his back to Sandor once more and walked to the end of the hallway, calling out over his shoulder, “Give me a ring when Sansa’s ready!”

 

Sandor watched as Loras disappeared around the corner. He took a deep breath and exhaled, schooling his expression into some sense of normalcy before he entered his apartment again. He was way too fucking tense, and Loras had put him on edge even more. When he opened the door and stepped inside, Sansa was sitting down on the couch, looking nervous as hell, and she jumped up at the sight of him coming back. Sandor shut the door behind himself.

 

“I saw Officer Loras through the peephole,” Sansa said hurriedly, “but I didn’t want to answer the door—”

 

“It’s all right,” Sandor said, cutting her off with a wave of his hand. “Loras is a friend. He’s going to take you home later.”

 

Sansa looked confused. “But I thought you were . . . ”

 

“It’s better if he does,” Sandor told her, and finally he looked down and took notice of his clothes on Sansa. The shorts were too long and too wide, bunched up awkwardly around her hips because she had refused to pull them too high, and his shirt was awkwardly large on her smaller frame as well. For once since he woke up this morning, Sandor was actually amused about something. “You look better today,” he said, and then he made a joke. “You had chunks,” Sandor added, gesturing at his chest with his hand, waving it around, “all over you last night . . . ”

 

Sansa crossed her arms, glaring at him petulantly. “That’s not funny,” she said in a quiet voice.

 

“No, it’s fucking hilarious.”

 

Sansa looked away from him, dropping her arms, and returned back to the couch to plop down. She put her hands in her lap. Her gaze was cast downward, sullen and unbelievably sad, almost like she was going to cry. Sandor sighed at himself. Man, he really had a way with words.

 

“Come on,” he said, “laugh about it. It’s not a big deal. We all do it.”

 

Sansa was quiet for a little while longer, and then she took a deep breath. “Can . . . can we be serious for a moment?” she asked, and Sandor looked down to see her fingers were fidgeting in her lap. He felt he was going to need a chair for this, whatever it was, so Sandor took a seat in the only chair that existed in his living room. With Sansa occupying the couch, he didn’t want to sit there. He wondered what in the world she wanted to be serious about, but nothing came to mind immediately, and Sandor figured there was no point in mentally torturing himself over it before she even said anything.

 

He was silent, waiting on her, until she managed to get the words out. “I . . . I wanted to thank you for last night,” Sansa finally said, looking up nervously from her hands, “and this morning.”

 

Sandor drew his brow together. “What are you thanking me for?”

 

Sansa looked down at her lap again. “Because,” she said, and then she met his eyes again, “I know I can trust you.” Sandor saw something there in her eyes that he didn’t see there a moment ago, a spark or a light under the surface, and she smiled softly at him.

 

“What do you mean?” Sandor asked, suddenly wary.

 

“Well,” Sansa began, “I was drunk, and we were all alone, and you . . . you could’ve done whatever you wanted to do, if you wanted to do it, like most men would have done . . . and I wouldn’t have been able to stop you . . . ” Sansa’s hands were shaking in her lap, and her voice got even quieter. “But instead, you draped me in a blanket, and you walked away . . . ”

 

Sandor realized his hands were subconsciously clutching onto the armrests of the chair with a death grip, turning his knuckles ghostly white. This was a very uncomfortable subject for him, but why, he couldn’t say. He didn’t know what to say to that. Before he could form any sort of response to it, Sandor noticed Sansa had gotten up from the couch. His hands clutched even tighter onto the armrests as she walked closer to him. Sandor’s eyes regarded her apprehensively with each step she took until she was standing in front of him.

 

Sansa leaned over and wrapped her arms around his neck for a hug. Sandor felt one of her hands against the back of his head while the other one rested on his upper back. “Thank you,” she whispered into his ear, and Sandor clenched his teeth, though not in anger. It was his nerves. He had horrible fucking nerves. When Sansa pulled back somewhat, Sandor felt her lips on his cheek. She kissed him gently there, just a peck and nothing more, before she pulled away from him, visibly shaking despite her resolve.

 

 _Since when did people feel obligated to thank other people for being decent fucking human beings?_ Sandor thought, but he didn’t say that out loud. He swallowed past a lump in his throat, and suddenly rose from his chair to walk into the kitchen and pour himself a glass of water. Sandor raised the glass to his lips and took two gulps when he heard a knock at the door. Sansa was still standing in the same spot he had left her in, looking like she didn’t know what to do next with his abrupt behavior. Sandor put his glass down and answered the door.

 

It was the takeout. Sandor took it and paid for it, closing the door behind himself and bringing it into the kitchen. “Are you hungry?” he called out to Sansa, waiting for her to look at him. When she did turn to face him, Sandor noticed how she took a deep breath. “I ordered something for us to eat,” he told her, and Sansa’s shaky expression finally gave way to a genuine smile.

 

“Yes, I am,” Sansa said, and she climbed onto one of the stools by the counter to join him. There was no more uncomfortable talk, but something felt different about the air all the same, even though Sandor couldn’t put his finger on it. He acted as if nothing had been said at all, and that nothing was different between them, and somehow that made Sansa even more relaxed than the opposite. It wasn’t long before she was laughing despite her head still hurting from last night.

 

Something was definitely different, but Sandor wasn’t quite sure that he minded it at all.

 

 


	15. Act Nice Like a Lady

_* * *_

 

Even after she had gotten in the police car with Loras Tyrell, Sansa’s head was still pounding from last night. The nausea had passed sometime after she had gotten some food in her stomach to fill it up again, but not the headache from her hangover. Sandor had given her some aspirin for the pain before she left his apartment, and Sansa was waiting silently in the passenger seat of the vehicle as it drove smoothly down Kingsroad Highway, holding her forehead and hoping for it to kick in and stop the throbbing in her brain.

 

Despite the fact that Loras was supposed to be Sandor’s friend and was helping her out with getting her home and giving her a cover story for where she had been last night, Sansa still felt acutely nervous being in the police car with him. Loras let her sit up front instead of in the backseat to be more comfortable, but it didn’t really help. She fidgeted the whole time, and found herself staring out of the window at the passing scenes and sites, wishing she was back at Sandor’s apartment instead of going home.

 

Before she had started going out with Joffrey, Sansa had had the biggest crush on Loras Tyrell. He was gorgeous. He had bright eyes, cute brown curls, a boyish charm to his adorable face, and he worked out, so he was built but not huge or anything. Then, however, Sansa had found out he was gay. It had crushed all those hopes pretty fast. Besides, he had been older than her too, and Sansa had always figured he wouldn’t go for a younger girl anyway, completely oblivious to the fact that he didn’t go for girls at _all_.

 

They had been driving in silence for some time after Loras had tried to start a conversation with her but Sansa remained fairly quiet because of her head hurting. Loras had understood, though, and he nodded his head and focused on the road as he drove instead. Now, however, something came to his mind that he wanted to share with her.

 

“Before we get to your house,” Loras said to her, “we need to have a story prepared to tell your parents about where you’ve been.”

 

Sansa finally looked back at him, tearing her eyes away from the scenery outside of the window. She swallowed past a catch in her throat. “What are we going to tell them?” she asked him.

 

Loras turned to Sansa, shooting a grin at her. “Don’t worry,” he said, looking back to the road. “I’ve got a story already prepared for you. I’ve spoken with Margaery, so here is what we are going to tell your parents. You were hanging out over at her house, watching movies and being a normal girl, when you went to the bathroom texting on your phone and you accidentally dropped your phone into the toilet, effectively messing it up. You fell asleep on the couch watching movies, and completely forgot to call your parents before you fell asleep, and when you woke up, it was morning. Perfectly normal mistake. You weren’t doing anything for them to worry about.”

 

Sansa suddenly wondered why Loras and Margaery wanted to help her, and not for the first time since Sandor told her Loras was a friend. Sansa had always been afraid that Margaery might try to get her into trouble if she had been doing anything out of the ordinary, and yet here was Loras and Margaery working together to cover up where she had been last night. Sansa was so overwhelmed with the help that she didn’t know what to say or do, so she pulled her phone out of her pocket. She pressed the button on the side to light up her screen, gulping when she saw all of the missed calls and voicemails from her parents. It was a _nightmare_.

 

Sansa began shaking her head as she held her phone, looking down at it. “But my phone is perfectly fine—”

 

Loras reached over and plucked her phone out of her hands, popped off the lid of his drink cup, and dropped her phone into it with a _plunk_.

 

Sansa gasped in shock. “Loras!” she exclaimed, completely forgetting to call him Officer Loras in her distress.

 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Loras suddenly said. “I didn’t know you wanted me to walk through the front door of your house and say to your parents, ‘Yes, Mr. and Mrs. Stark, I found Sansa in the apartment of a thirty-three year old man who took her home after she had had way too much to drink over at my boyfriend’s nightclub last night.’ Is that what you want me to say? Because I can say that, too.”

 

Sansa paled at that. “No,” she answered slowly. “No, I don’t want you to say that . . . ”

 

“Well, then,” Loras said, “what’s a ruined phone mean to you? Absolutely nothing, I’m willing to bet.”

 

Sansa sighed, dropping her face into her hands. “I just want to go home and lay down,” she admitted out loud, her voice muffled by her hands over her mouth. “My head hurts . . . ”

 

“That’s what happens when you drink too much,” Loras informed her cheerfully. “It results in really bad hangovers the next morning, especially for lightweights, and you’re really tiny.”

 

Sansa lifted her head up at that and made a face at him. “I’m not really tiny,” she argued back. “I’m very tall.”

 

Loras took one glance at her, and then he turned back to look at the road again. “You’re tiny,” he repeated.

 

“I am not,” Sansa insisted, feeling indignant.

 

“Teeny tiny,” Loras added, looking at Sansa yet again to grin at her.

 

“I am _not_!”

 

“Teeny weenie teeny tiny,” Loras teased her, and when Sansa crossed her arms over her chest and growled at him in exasperation, Loras laughed out loud at her reaction. “Gosh, you’re so adorable,” he said, shaking his head at Sansa as he gently turned the steering wheel of the police car to guide it around a corner on the street. Sansa glanced over at Loras, seeing that he still had a bright grin on his face.

 

She felt herself blushing, her face and neck feeling hot. It was sweet that Loras called her adorable, but he was gay and it had a _completely_ different meaning to it when he called her adorable than if, say, Sandor called her adorable. Sansa felt herself blushing even more at that thought, remembering everything that happened between her and Sandor this morning. She had been taking a bath when he came into the bathroom, and at first, Sansa really didn’t think about saying anything. She had been lying down in the tub, just soaking and enjoying the peacefulness of a calm bath with her eyes closed, when she heard the door open and then shut, which didn’t disturb her rest very much.

 

It wasn’t until she had heard Sandor using the toilet that her eyes shot wide open. Sansa had chosen to remain silent rather than startle him, thinking he wouldn’t be in there long anyway, but then he was lingering. When she had heard him speak, Sansa wondered what he was cursing at, until she remembered she had used his toothbrush and he probably wasn’t very happy about that. Finally, instead of saying anything, Sansa decided to make a splash to get his attention.

 

It had gotten Sandor’s attention, and then he left the bathroom in a hurry. Sansa finished up in the tub, having had to use his shower gel and his shampoo because she didn’t have any of her own, so now she _smelled_ like a man and that probably wasn’t very good, but there was nothing she could do about it. However, on the plus side, things were good with Sandor. In fact, they were more than just good. Sandor hadn’t tried to take advantage of her while she was drunk, and he was also always trying to look out for her, so Sansa was beginning to believe for sure that he had feelings for her. Maybe Sandor wouldn’t say it out loud because of some sort of manly code that forbade it, and maybe all of it made him very nervous if his behavior with her hugging and kissing him was anything to go by, but _something_ was there. Sansa _felt_ it. She knew she wasn’t imagining things.

 

When Loras pulled into the driveway of her house, though, all of Sansa’s thoughts regarding Sandor fled from her head. Her anxiety shot through the roof with the thought of having to face her parents after last night. Loras fished her phone out of his drink and cleaned it off, but Sansa didn’t even notice Loras was holding it out to her until he cleared his throat to get her attention. Sansa looked over at him, and then she looked down to see her phone in his hand. Sansa swallowed, reaching out to take her cell phone. She tried turning it on. It flicked on, but then it shut off again immediately. Her heart dropped with that. What if Sandor tried to call her now, and he couldn’t get a hold of her? Would he think she was ignoring him?

 

Officer Loras exited the vehicle, and Sansa opened her door as well to step out and shut it behind her. The front door to the house opened immediately. They must have seen the police vehicle pull up from the windows, but no one came rushing out of the front door. Sansa expected her parents might try to do something like that, especially her mother, so it confused her when it didn’t happen. Suddenly, she was terrified. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

 

Loras escorted her to the front door, and her parents were standing on the other side. Sansa had never seen such severe expressions on either of their faces. They were _mad_ at her. No, they weren’t just mad. They were _furious_. They weren’t worried. Why were they angry? Sansa’s heart started to pound inside of her ribcage as she tried running through all of the possibilities in her head.

 

“Good afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Stark,” Loras greeted them with a smile and tilt of his head.

 

“Good afternoon, Officer Loras,” Catelyn said, while Ned brooded silently behind her. “Thank you for bringing our daughter home to us.”

 

Loras grinned at Catelyn. “It’s not a problem,” he said. “I’m more than happy to. I found her over at my sister’s house.” Loras then ran through the story he had told Sansa in the vehicle. When he was finished, he said, “I’m really sorry about all of this, Mrs. Stark. I’m sure Sansa did not mean to scare you. It was an honest mistake.”

 

“Yes, thank you, Officer Loras,” Catelyn said very curtly, which brought a small frown to Loras’s face, “but we will take this from here.” Catelyn reached out to take Sansa by the shoulder and guide her into the house, and Sansa followed despite the warning in her heart. “Good day, Officer Loras,” Catelyn told him, and she shut the door behind Sansa. Her mother led her into the living room, and the first thing Sansa noticed when she raised her downcast eyes was that her brother, Jon, was sitting on the couch.

 

Sansa’s face lit up. “Oh my god, Jon!” she said, and Sansa ran to him with a grin on her face. Jon grinned as well, rising from the couch to accept her sudden hug as she threw her arms around his neck.

 

“It’s so good to see you, Sansa,” Jon told her. When Sansa pulled away from him, she felt the grin falling from her face. Jon wasn’t smiling anymore. His expression looked a little worried and pained, though it held nowhere near the same intensity as her parents. “I’ll give you some time alone with Father and Cat,” he said, and then he cast his eyes over her shoulder at Ned and Cat. Sansa felt Jon’s hand grip her shoulder. He looked back down at her, tried to smile, but it failed miserably.

 

Sansa watched helplessly as Jon ascended the stairs to the second floor. She realized she was shaking as she turned around to face her parents. Ned was like a hardened statue, his eyes piercing and cold, and Catelyn looked like a pot waiting to boil over into a mess all over the place with her twisting expression of fury. Sansa couldn’t understand what would make them this mad at her. _What had happened?_ she thought, and not for the first time since she had arrived home again.

 

“Is something else wrong?” Sansa slowly ventured, rubbing her arm nervously.

 

Ned calmly walked over to the couch, but bent over the coffee table and scooped something up. To Sansa’s horror, it was Sandor’s jacket. Ned held it up by the collar, letting it dangle in the air. “What’s this?” Ned asked her in his firm voice, shaking the jacket once.

 

Sansa was frozen in place. She had no idea what to say to that. “It’s . . . it’s a jacket,” Sansa tried feebly.

 

“This is _not_ the jacket of a teenage boy,” Ned told his daughter. “I tried it on myself. It’s big even on me. Whose jacket is this, Sansa?”

 

Sansa felt herself shaking. She clutched her arms around her chest. “I just . . . found it. It’s not anybody’s jacket. I picked it up . . . on the beach . . . ”

 

Ned lowered the jacket. His gaze was as hard as stone. “You expect me to believe that?” he asked.

 

“It’s . . . it’s the truth,” Sansa tried to say, but then Ned dropped the jacket back on the coffee table. He bent over and picked up two other things from the table. Sansa felt her heart beginning to race inside of her chest. What was it now? What else had he found? When her father stood up straight again, he was holding in one of his hands a pack of matchsticks. He held it close enough to read the writing on it. “Clegane’s Keep,” Ned read out loud. He cut his eyes at Sansa. “So, you go to pubs now, Sansa?”

 

Sansa couldn’t say anything. Her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth. Ned threw the matchsticks down on the coffee table, causing Sansa to flinch.

 

“Are you having sex, Sansa?” her father suddenly asked, and Sansa’s eyes went wide at such a question.

 

“ _No_ ,” Sansa said quickly. “Of course, I’m not having sex—”

 

Ned crossed the distance between them, holding up his other hand. Sansa didn’t even want to look at first, averting her eyes because she was afraid of what she might see. Sansa was trembling all over her body, and she was scared half to death of what would make her father ask a question like that in the first place, and then she heard her father’s voice say as if it was a million miles away, “Then, what is this?”

 

Sansa slowly turned her head back to look at her father’s hand. There, between his thumb and forefinger, was the unmistakable and unbroken wrapper of a condom. Sansa was so shocked that she had no reaction but stillness and silence. It took her a moment, but she managed to find her voice again.

 

“Where was that?” Sansa asked her father in barely a whisper.

 

“Where do you think it was?” Ned asked, lowering his hand and looking his daughter in the eyes. “It was in one of the pockets on this jacket along with that case of matchsticks. Now, are you going to start telling me the truth, Sansa?”

 

Sansa slowly shook her head. “I haven’t done anything—”

 

“Go to your room,” Ned said immediately. “ _Now_.”

 

Sansa felt tears stinging in the back of her eyes, and she turned away from her father to run up the stairs to her room. She slammed the door behind herself, but when she turned around to look up, she gasped as her hand flew to her heart. There, sitting on her bed, was her brother Jon. Sansa wanted to yell at him to tell him to get out, but he was looking at her with those empathic and sad eyes of his set in an expression of worry, and Sansa couldn’t do anything but wrap her arms around herself and start crying real tears.

 

Jon got up from her bed and walked over to Sansa, wrapping his arms around her in a hug. He patted her back and started to rock her back and forth like she was a child. “I saw everything on the table before you came home,” he said, “and I heard Father and Cat talking about it. I knew what was coming, so I figured maybe you wanted someone to talk to about it who wouldn’t be so harsh or judgmental with you. Father and Cat are just . . . trying to be good parents, you know.”

 

“But I _haven’t_ done anything wrong,” Sansa cried against Jon’s chest, her fingers clutching onto him. “I haven’t done anything wrong, Jon, I promise.”

 

“It’s all right, I believe you,” Jon said, and he patted her back. He held her until she stopped crying, and then he pulled away from Sansa to look her in the face. Jon gently brushed away the tear streaks on each cheek with his thumb before smiling at her and taking her by the shoulders. “I have an idea,” he told her. “How about you take some time to rest, change into some clean clothes, and you and me will spend the day together? We’ll get some ice cream or something, and I’ll buy you a new phone to replace the one that got ruined in Margaery’s toilet.” The corner of Jon’s mouth quirked upward at this, and Sansa couldn’t help but smile back at him through her tears.

 

She quickly hugged Jon again. “Okay,” Sansa agreed, and when she pulled away from him once more, Sansa wiped her hand over both sides of her face. “I just need a nap first,” she said quietly. Jon didn’t ask her any questions. He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead, ran his hand over her hair, and turned around to walk towards the door of her room. Sansa watched as Jon left, closing the door behind himself, and then she turned back to look at her bed. It looked so comforting and inviting.

 

Sansa went to her dresser first to grab a nightgown. She peeled off her clothes from last night, slipped on the nightgown, and crawled under her sheets. The moment Sansa closed her eyes, she felt the world slowly fading away from her until she fell into a deep sleep. It wasn’t long before she felt a hand gently shaking her awake, and she slowly blinked her eyes open to see Jon’s face above her in the daylight, smiling down at her with raised eyebrows.

 

“Come on,” Jon said in a chipper voice. “Time to wake up, Sansa. Phones and ice cream, child, phones and ice cream,” he jested, and Sansa swatted his hand away from her shoulder as he laughed at her.

 

Sansa crawled out of bed, and Jon left the room so she could change into something new. Her hangover was finally gone, and her head felt twenty times better than it felt before. Sansa brushed her hair and slipped on a pair of trainers before she met Jon down in the living room. Luckily, her parents weren’t there, so she didn’t have to face them again so soon.

 

Jon led Sansa out the front door and over to his black jeep. He drove down the busy streets and brought her to a shop that sold cell phones for her carrier first, so Sansa picked out a new phone. As Jon was paying for it at the checkout, Sansa leaned over to give him a quick peck on the cheek in thank you. Jon laughed at that, and Sansa grinned at his response. She was starting to feel happy again, but it was easy to feel happy around Jon. He was the best brother in the world.

 

He took her to Baskin-Robbins after that, and Jon picked out a Mint Chocolate Chip cone and Sansa picked out a Lemon Custard cone, and they walked outside to the patio section to sit down and eat their ice cream. Jon looked at Sansa across the table in the sunshine with a curious look on his face. So far, he hadn’t asked her anything about the incident with Ned and Cat earlier, but now Sansa was afraid he was about to ask her something, and she was right.

 

“Do you want to talk about what happened earlier?” Jon asked her, and he took a bite out of his ice cream. He was going to get brain freeze doing that, Sansa thought. She always licked her ice cream, and Jon just barreled right through and ate his all at once. It was like he had some sort of high tolerance to frozen objects or something.

 

Sansa licked at her ice cream, and then pondered if she wanted to share any of that stuff with Jon. Right now, she decided she wasn’t ready to, so she shook her head at him. “No, not really,” Sansa answered him. “I would rather not think about it right now. We’ve been having a good day so far, and I don’t want to get upset again.”

 

Jon was quiet for a moment, but then he smiled at her across the table. He nodded his head. “Okay,” Jon said. “We won’t talk about it, then. But,” he quickly added, holding up a finger to point at her, “if you ever do want to talk about it, know that you can trust me, Sansa. I’m here for you. I always have been. I always will be. Anything at all that you want to talk about, I’m here for you.”

 

Sansa smiled softly at her brother. “Thank you, Jon,” she said in a quiet voice. “I’ll remember that, I promise.”

 

Jon returned her smile. “Good,” he said.

 

They finished their ice cream, talking about Jon’s summer classes at college and her summer so far. They discussed Arya’s enrollment at Crossroads Camp in their parents’ attempt to curb her wild behavior, and so far, it seemed as if it was working, but Sansa didn’t mention Gendry or some of the other things that Arya hid from their parents. Arya was good at being sneaky, and Sansa wasn’t going to rat her sister out. The camp didn’t start until a month after summer began, which meant it wasn’t going to be long until Arya had to go back. Sansa wondered with a grin on her face whether Arya would pitch a fit about it this year or go willingly.

 

Instead of going back home after the ice cream, Jon and Sansa drove to the mall and spent some more time together, but eventually, Sansa’s mind began to wander and think of other things. They passed by the bookstore, and Sansa froze all of a sudden, glancing past the big opening from the inside of the mall. She stared past the tables near the front, holding various stacks of books, and then her eyes looked beyond to the coffee shop and the table that she, Arya, Sandor, and Gendry had played Blackjack at a week ago.

 

“What is it, Sansa?” Jon suddenly asked her, and Sansa looked back at him, breaking away from her reverie.

 

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said, shaking her head. Sansa glanced back at the table again, though, and realized how right now she would rather be with Sandor than her brother, Jon, and that made her feel awful. Sansa bit down on her bottom lip, turning back to Jon to try and smile at him.

 

Sansa linked her arm with Jon, and said cheerfully, “Come on, let’s go explore the wild world of midday mall crowds!”

 

Jon laughed at that, and Sansa grinned as well, and off they went to disappear amongst the swarm of bodies ahead of them.

 

 


	16. Go Get Your Shovel and We’ll Dig a Deep Hole

_* * *_

 

Sandor pushed the shopping cart down the aisle as Sansa rode on the opposite end of it, her hands holding onto the metal rim of the cart and her feet propped up on the bottom bar. She was leaning forward over the cart for balance, and Sandor had to avert his gaze from Sansa because she was wearing one of her low cut summer dresses again. This one was white with small spaghetti straps, an empire waistline with a green sash, and the white fabric below the waist was decorated with life-sized green stemmed red roses. It showed way too much cleavage when she bent forward and squeezed her arms together. If Sandor didn’t know any better, he would have said she was doing it on purpose, but he knew she wasn’t doing it on purpose. That was just, well, ridiculous.

 

Sandor wasn’t sure when hanging out with Sansa went from once a week to every two or three days, but things had been going that way for the last three weeks ever since that night at Maegor’s Holdfast. He had been seeing a lot of Sansa these days. They stopped spending time together at night to avoid her getting into trouble, though sometimes Sandor still occasionally picked her up during the evening here or there for something or another. They stuck with their routine of meeting at the end of the street, and things were smooth. Most of their outings together were daytime events like today’s outing at the store. Sandor had to pick up a few things, and even though he thought it was as boring as hell and she’d rather not come along, Sansa had really wanted to come along with him, and so he agreed to let her come.

 

When he thought about it, he had known Sansa for two months now. It was weird if he thought about it too much, though. Those two months had flown by, especially this second one. It was even weirder to think about how in about a month or two, Sansa would be going back to school again. It was her final year, and then she had plans to go to college. Sandor had never been to college. Sometimes it felt like they had nothing whatsoever in common and yet somehow they managed to carry on some weird sort of friendship that worked out despite all of their differences, and maybe it just happened to work out because of them. Sandor wasn’t entirely sure how that worked, anyway. He just knew that it did.

 

Whenever he had gotten worried about her parents possibly noticing her missing so often, Sansa always told him they thought she was at her friend Margaery’s house. Eventually, Sandor had stopped worrying about it and just focused on his time with her. He had assumed everything must have went well with Loras bringing her home that day because Sandor never heard anything about it from Sansa, except for that story about how Loras had snatched her phone and dunked it into his drink cup as part of the cover story for her parents. It sounded like some shit Loras would do, Sandor thought. Sansa had also told him how her brother, Jon, had bought her a new phone to replace the one Loras had ruined. Her new phone was pink and white, and she had shown it to him first thing upon seeing him again as she shared the story about Loras with him. Admittedly, Sandor laughed when she told him about the phone dunking bit because, seriously, that was some funny shit.

 

As they turned down another aisle, something on the shelf caught Sansa’s eyes. She gasped, hopping off of the cart as Sandor halted it for her, and then she bent over to pick up a small box. Sansa made the cutest noise in the back of her throat, and turned to Sandor with the box held up. “Oh my god, look at it,” she said, walking over to him and holding it out for him to see.

 

Sandor raised his eyebrows at it. It was a bar of soap cut in the shape of a duck with a little rope hanging out of the box. The box read _Bathtime Duck_ at the top, and under that it said _Soap On-A-Rope_. Sandor lifted his eyes to hers again. “Seriously?” he asked.

 

“Will you buy this for me?” Sansa asked him, holding the box up to the side of her head. “Please?” she said, tilting her head to the side and giving him her best impression of puppy dog eyes.

 

“You want me to buy you soap?” Sandor asked flatly. “Of all the things you could ask for, soap.”

 

“Oh, but it smells like lemon verbena, and I love lemons,” Sansa told him.

 

“You want duck soap,” Sandor repeated, shaking his head in disbelief.

 

“But it’s so _cute_!”

 

Sandor shook his head again, and began pushing the cart once more. “Remind me why I hang out with you again?” Sandor asked her, though really, he was just playing with her.

 

Sansa was walking alongside him, still holding the box of duck soap. “Because I’m cute and adorable and sweet and I make you happy?” she teasingly suggested to him, looking over at him to gauge his reaction. Out of the corner of his eyes, Sandor could see she was smiling and biting her lip. _Damn it_ , Sandor thought to himself. If only she wasn’t cute and adorable and sweet and made him happy.

 

They turned down the next aisle, which brought them close to some bedding displays. Sandor spotted the perfect thing to mock her with, pulled the cart over, and picked it up. “I should buy you this instead,” he told her, holding it up. It was a colorful childlike pillow shaped like a bird with flappable wings sewn onto it. Sandor pointed at it with his free hand as he held it. “See, it even looks like you.”

 

Sansa gasped, her mouth falling wide open. “Oh no, you didn’t—”

 

“Oh yes, I did.”

 

Sandor threw the pillow at Sansa, but she ducked her head while holding up her hands to block it, squealing as it hit her. Sansa caught it with her hands before it fell, though, and when she straightened herself again, she was holding the pillow and looking at it. Sansa made at face at it as if she thought it was the dumbest looking thing she had ever seen. “No, I don’t want that,” she joked with him, tossing the pillow back at him. Sandor caught it easily.

 

“Oh, I see how it is,” Sandor shot back, turning to put the pillow back on the bedding display. “I was going to buy you a fucking gift, but you don’t want it. Fine.” He was just messing with her again, but he sounded as serious as hell. Sandor wondered if Sansa could even tell the difference.

 

Sansa bent forward and started laughing. “Oh, come on, don’t be like that,” she said, and she straightened her back and hurried over to his side, grabbing his arm and dragging him back to the cart. Sandor noticed she had already placed the duck soap in the cart with everything else. She must have been very intent on getting it. “I’m seventeen, not ten,” Sansa elaborated further. “Duck shaped soap is okay. Bird shaped pillows are not.”

 

“Keep reminding me you’re seventeen, and I’ll keep feeling like a creepy old man,” Sandor told her as he began pushing the cart again, and Sansa walked alongside him with her hand on the rim.

 

“There’s nothing creepy about hanging out with someone my age,” Sansa said, “unless the person my age doesn’t _want_ to hang out with you, _then_ it’s creepy.”

 

“Are we talking stalking now?”

 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Sansa said absentmindedly, shrugging her shoulders. “Do you hang outside my window with binoculars?”

 

“ _Fucking_ hell,” Sandor swore, bringing the cart to a sudden stop. He looked down at Sansa with disbelief written all over his face. “Really?” he asked her, but this time he wasn’t amused by the joke. Sandor didn’t find it funny at all.

 

“It’s a _joke_ ,” Sansa enunciated to him, looking directly at his face as she said it. “Gosh, I didn’t know you were actually _sitting_ out there with binoculars. Next time I’ll remember to close my blinds . . . ” Sansa started laughing, though, and she wrapped both of her arms around Sandor’s left arm. Sandor looked away from her and continued walking again, shaking his head at her, and Sansa kept up beside him. “I’m sorry,” she said in a serious voice, no longer laughing. “Please forgive me, and buy me the cute ducky soap.”

 

Sandor answered her with a growl in the back of his throat, and Sansa must have taken it for a yes because she grinned up at him and focused ahead of them again.

 

“You should get some paint,” Sansa suddenly suggested to him as they passed through the home improvement section, and that got Sandor’s attention. He paused from pushing the shopping cart, and then he turned his gaze away from the shelves to aim it on Sansa. Sandor narrowed his eyes at her.

 

“Paint?” Sandor repeated, echoing her word, and Sansa widened her eyes as she slowly nodded her head at him.

 

“Yes, Sandor,” Sansa answered him just as slowly like she was talking to a small child. “Paint. You use it on walls. To add _color_.”

 

Sandor pointed his finger at her. “You keep being a smartass and see what I do.”

 

Sansa opened her mouth to say something, but then she suddenly turned beet red and closed it, not saying whatever it was that popped into her head. Sandor was intensely curious to know what it was, but he wasn’t going to push it. Sansa cast her gaze away from his eyes and focused it on the shelf. Sandor followed her gaze. “Like that one,” she said quickly, using her normal voice again. “Green would look good in your apartment. A dark forest green. It would liven everything up.”

 

“You want to paint my apartment,” Sandor said, turning back to Sansa. She glanced up from the paint cans, smiling at him and shrugging her shoulders.

 

“I think it’d be fun,” she told him, and Sandor looked back down at the paint cans on the shelf.

 

When they finally left the store, Sandor had bought her the damn duck soap along with everything else he had picked up for himself. He also bought some cans of dark green paint like Sansa had suggested as well as the necessary supplies needed for painting that he didn’t already have in his apartment. Hell, he might as well make the most of it. Sandor didn’t have anything else to do for the rest of the day. This was his day off, and so far, they had been spending the whole day together. What was a paint job but something to entertain themselves with for the next few hours, anyway?

 

Sandor drove them back to his apartment, and they hauled everything upstairs. Thankfully, it only took two trips. Sandor started putting the stuff away, and Sansa was helping, even though he told her not to, but she knew where everything was in his apartment by now. Once everything was put away, the two of them began to set up the living room for a paint job. It wasn’t that hard to figure it all out. Sandor laid out the protective film over the floor, made sure to use the thick roll of tape wherever it was needed, and set up a small ladder.

 

“Do you have a large shirt I can wear over my dress?” Sansa asked him, and Sandor looked over from the ladder at her dress. Yeah, she was going to get paint all over that. It was a cute dress on her, too. Sandor cursed at himself for that thought and got down off the ladder, heading for his room. He found an oversized shirt big enough to act as a dress on her, and returned to the living room with it.

 

“I have this,” Sandor said, holding it up. “But if you get paint on this, it’ll bleed right through onto your dress.”

 

Sansa thoughtfully pursed her lips, and then she strode up to him to take the shirt and walked to the bathroom with it. When she came back, she was standing there in her shoes and just his t-shirt. Her dress must have been left on the counter in the bathroom, but the disturbing part to Sandor was her wearing just the t-shirt and nothing else underneath it but her bra and panties.

 

“Whoa, go put some pants on,” Sandor said suddenly, pointing into his room. He didn’t care what she grabbed as long as she grabbed _something_ to put on underneath that thing. Sansa made a face at him, though.

 

“I didn’t have pants on underneath my dress,” she said, “and this is just like a dress.”

 

“I don’t care,” Sandor told her. “Put some pants on.”

 

Sansa crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ll wear what I want to wear,” she shot back, and then she made her way over to the paint cans, pans, and rollers. Sandor wanted to tell Sansa to go to his room and find something to put on underneath that fucking t-shirt, but he couldn’t force her to do anything she didn’t want to do. Sighing in annoyance, he turned away from her and focused on setting everything else up while she poured the paint into two pans and prepared the rollers and paint brushes.

 

Eventually, they were set for painting. Sansa handed him one of the rollers, and she took the other one. Sandor was on the ladder, painting the top of the wall, while Sansa painted near the floor. They worked on the same wall together, chatting idly as they worked and making jokes at each other as usual, when some of the paint from Sandor’s roller accidentally dripped onto Sansa’s hair.

 

“Ugh, you got it in my hair,” Sansa complained, trying to wipe it away and pick it out, but the paint ended up smearing in her hair. Sandor looked down and put his roller to the side.

 

“Oh, shit,” he said all of a sudden. “I’m sorry. It’ll wash out. Don’t worry.”

 

Sansa sighed in exasperation, but she stopped focusing on her hair and went back to painting again. Satisfied that she wasn’t pissed off with him, Sandor got down off the ladder to put the roller in the paint pan again to get some fresh paint on it. As he was bent over the pan, rolling the roller, Sandor felt something thick and wet suddenly hit him on the back of his shoulder. Sandor paused, and then he slowly looked over his shoulder to see a glob of dark green paint on his shirt.

 

He glanced up at Sansa. She was grinning like a madwoman, holding up her roller, the fingers of her free hand smeared green from the paint she had thrown at him.

 

“You did not just do that,” Sandor said, and Sansa bit down on her bottom lip in an attempt not to laugh. Sandor held up his finger, shaking it. “You know, I’m going to give you that one. Just this once. But if you try that again, you’re going to wish you’d never been born.”

 

Sandor looked away from her and stood up with his roller when a second glob of paint flew at him and hit him _smack_ against the side of his face. Sandor closed his eyes all of a sudden at the impact, knowing immediately that Sansa had chucked another glob of paint at him. Exhaling a deep breath, Sandor opened his eyes and slowly turned to look at Sansa. She was still grinning and holding her roller. Very carefully, Sandor bent over to put his down into the pan near his feet.

 

As he was rising to stand up straight again, Sansa dropped her roller on top of the protective film he had laid out across the floor and started running.

 

Sansa cut around his couch in a mad dash, and Sandor went after her. He chased her around the living room and kitchen for a minute until Sansa got smart and made a sprint for the hallway. Sandor knew if she shut one of the doors and locked them then she would win this round. Hell, no, he wasn’t going to let her win this. Before she could slam the door to his bedroom in his face, Sandor blocked it with his palm against the door, using all of his strength to shove inward at the door. It flew open, and Sansa stumbled back with a gasp of shock, but then she was laughing as she ran from him again.

 

Sansa ran for the bed and hopped on it to crawl to the other side in escape, but Sandor was quicker than her. He snatched her by her shin and ankle and yanked her back, which caused the too large shirt she was wearing to rake up dangerously high, but he wasn’t paying attention to that, anyway. Sansa squealed out loud, upset at being caught, and Sandor rolled her over onto her back and leaned over the bed to glare at her and point one of his fingers down at her. His other hand was still holding onto her shin.

 

“I told you you’d regret it,” Sandor said, but Sansa was still grinning and she kicked at him, making him lose his grip on her leg. Sansa rolled back over onto her stomach and crawled away, laughing at him, and Sandor crawled onto the bed to snatch her by the arms and stop her again. Sansa squealed a second time, calling out, “No!” She wiggled in his grasp, effectively getting them into a messy tangle of limbs upon the bed as Sandor tried to get the upper hand with her.

 

Finally, he did it. He got her still in his arms beneath him, and Sansa’s chest was still heaving with laughter. Sandor could feel it against his own. Her eyes were bright and shining with mischief, and her face was flushed pink. She was grinning up at him. Suddenly, he noticed his heart was pounding very fast inside of his chest. It was all of the exertion. Definitely. Definitely, the exertion.

 

Sansa’s smile fell from her face as they stared at each other for a moment.

 

Suddenly, she rose from the bed and kissed him.

 

Somewhere in his mind, Sandor meant to pull away. He meant to pull away and get up from the bed and tell her not to ever do that again, but that wasn’t what happened. Sandor kissed her back, letting go of her wrists and pressing one hand to the bed as the other one came up to her neck. Sansa’s hands were on the sides of his face now, and somehow his lips parted against hers and hers against his and he deepened the kiss with his tongue. Sansa moaned against him, and her tongue tentatively reached up to touch his, and Sandor groaned at that, shifting his weight more evenly above her—until he realized his body was reacting in other ways, and suddenly Sandor’s eyes shot open and he immediately pulled away from Sansa.

 

Sandor got off the bed in a hurry, covering his face with his hands as he rubbed it repeatedly to bring himself back to reality. That should not have happened, he told himself. That was a huge fucking mistake. It didn’t matter how beautiful she was or how funny she was or how cute or how intelligent—she was only seventeen years old. What the _fuck_ was he doing, kissing her?

 

“That should not have happened,” Sandor said out loud, holding one of his arms out and pointing it at the bed, despite the fact that he was refusing to even look at it. He knew Sansa was still on it, and he heard rustling as she moved to sit up.

 

“Why not?” Sansa asked him, and she sounded hurt. She sounded _hurt_.

 

Sandor finally turned to look at her, staring with disbelief. “Because you’re a _girl_ ,” he stressed to her, “and I’m a man.”

 

Her hurt expression intensified at that. Sansa raised her arms to hug herself, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. “What are you saying?” she asked in a small voice. “You didn’t want to kiss me?”

 

“I’m not saying that—” _Fuck_ , Sandor thought. Of course, he was supposed to be saying that. Where did that come from?

 

“Well, either you do or you don’t,” Sansa argued back, sounding stronger this time.

 

“Sansa,” he said, agitated, “it’s not that _simple_.”

 

Sansa stood up quickly from the bed, and now she was glaring at him. She looked so hurt over every word coming out of his mouth, but she didn’t look like she was going to cry. Good, because Sandor couldn’t handle her crying right now. “Yes, it _is_ ,” she shot back. “Either you like me, or you don’t. Either you want to kiss me, or you don’t. Either you want me here, or you _don’t_.”

 

Sandor didn’t know what to say. He wanted all of those things, but that didn’t mean he could _have_ them. Thoughts were one thing. Actions were another. She ought to understand that. Why didn’t Sansa understand that? Why did he have to fucking explain it to her like she was a goddamn _child_ —and that was when it hit him.

 

She was a fucking child.

 

“I think it’s time I brought you home,” Sandor told her, and this time, he was speaking calmly.

 

Sansa wasn’t ready to let it go, though. She stepped forward with determination in each step, her face worried but set in stone. “Why was there a condom in your pocket that night we went to the pier?”

 

Sandor’s eyes went wide. “What?”

 

“There was a condom,” Sansa said, her voice shaking, “in your jacket pocket—”

 

 _Oh, fuck_ , he thought. The jacket she had taken home with her and kept forgetting to bring back to him. Sandor had forgotten all about that jacket by now. He had been using a different one ever since that night. He tried to think of how to explain this to her in a way that she would understand and not take the wrong way.

 

“Have you ever heard of ‘in case shit happens’?” Sandor asked her carefully.

 

Sansa narrowed her eyes. “Of course, I have.”

 

“Well,” he said slowly, “that was an ‘in case shit happens’ backup.”

 

Her blue eyes went wide as she stared at him. “For me?” she asked quietly. Sandor’s eyes widened as well with that, realizing she had completely taken it the wrong way from day _one_ , and no wonder this shit was happening now.

 

“Oh, fuck, no,” Sandor said without thinking about it. “That’s been in there for a while now. I just forgot about it—”

 

Sansa took that the wrong way, too. “It was for someone _else_?”

 

Goddamn it, why was everything going wrong? Sandor suddenly wanted to punch himself in the face right now. This was a nightmare. “No,” Sandor stressed to her, “it wasn’t for _anybody_. It was just there because I was trying to be a responsible fucking adult—”

 

Sansa’s next words shocked even him. “By fucking strangers?” she asked, disbelief in her voice. Sandor’s jaw fell down as he stared at her. He had never heard a curse word out of her mouth in all the time he had known her, and to hear the strongest one out there coming out of her lips all because of him really put him in his place. What did he say to that? She had him backed against a corner, and Sandor wanted nothing more than to get out of it.

 

“That’s not what I meant—”

 

“No, that’s what you meant,” Sansa shot back, cutting him off. “It wasn’t for _anybody_ , so you didn’t know who it was for, so it was for people you didn’t _know_.” Before he could formulate a response to that, Sansa was stalking towards the bedroom door.

 

“Where are you going?” Sandor asked her, quickly turning to follow her.

 

Sansa walked down the hall to his bathroom, scooping up her dress, and came back out to look at him. “I’m going home,” she said, and she stalked right past him towards the door of his apartment.

 

“Wait,” Sandor said, reaching over the countertop to grab his keys. “Let me give you a ride home—”

 

Sansa opened the door to his apartment and turned back to glare at him. “I’ll call someone to come pick me _up_ ,” she snapped at him, and then she slammed his door shut behind herself. It echoed loudly in the silence of his apartment, ringing in his ears like the aftershocks of an explosion.

 

Sandor clutched his keys tightly in his hand until the metal dug into his skin, and then he threw them angrily across his apartment, not caring where they landed. They hit something, ringing loudly, and fell to the floor.

 

A few feet away, the paint was slowly starting to dry up.

 

 


	17. You’re a Careless Con and a Crazy Liar

_* * *_

 

Keeping on a strong face was easy in front of Sandor, but as she walked down the hallways and rode down the elevator and exited out onto the busy street below in his too large shirt, carrying her dress over one arm, Sansa felt the shaking in her nerves intensifying with each step until it accumulated into a pile of tears pouring down her face. She walked down the street like that in front of a bunch of strangers until she had to take a seat on a pair of empty steps for a break, bending over her lap and just crying her eyes out until her chest and sides hurt from each heaving sob. Someone had tried to stop and ask her if she needed help, but she told them to go away. No one else stopped after that.

 

It felt like rejection. All she had done was kiss him, like she had been wanting to do for a long time now, and even though Sandor had kissed her back, he had shut down because of it. Sansa liked him, and she had feelings for him, and she wanted something more than just friendship with him. That didn’t mean she wanted to jump in bed with him, never mind the fact that they were _on_ his bed, but it felt like Sandor couldn’t separate the two things in his head if his reaction was anything to go by. Sansa couldn’t understand it. She understood she was seventeen and he was thirty-three. She wasn’t some daft girl who couldn’t see the difference, even if that’s what Sandor thought of her.

 

Sansa didn’t understand why they couldn’t just date. They could date until the age difference wasn’t such a big deal to him anymore, but even then, Sansa wondered how big of a deal it could possibly be when he had willingly kissed her back the way he had on his bed. He had made no move to get away from her at first, so she knew some part of him wanted her, too. Why was it so hard for him to accept it? They didn’t have to tell everybody, or throw it all out in public for everyone to see, but they could have it quietly to themselves. No one could judge them for it if no one knew about it. It was all so confusing for Sansa. Every time she tried to make sense of Sandor’s reactions, they made no sense to her.

 

Sansa had dated people without having sex with them, and all she wanted from Sandor was the same thing she had before with her other boyfriends. She didn’t need sex for a relationship. She had never even had it before. Why would she need it? Her heart fell as she wondered if maybe Sandor just couldn’t have a relationship without sex—maybe that’s what a relationship was to him, and that idea caused her to cry fresh tears all over again because he couldn’t have that with _her_ but he could have it with _other_ people.

 

Maybe that was why she brought up the condom. Sansa wasn’t sure why she brought it up. She had been so angry when the words came out of her mouth. She figured some part of her believed from the beginning it hadn’t been meant for her, and that had stirred some sort of jealousy underneath the surface at first, but she had pushed it aside as they spent time together more often and grew closer. Sansa had figured eventually that the condom had meant nothing, and he was just carrying it around for protection. When he rejected her, though, it brought all of those negative feelings to the surface again. It just came pouring out of her.

 

Not only that, but if the age difference was such a big deal to Sandor in the first place, then why was he even spending time with her as a friend? It was so unfair to Sansa for him to use that against her when he was spending all of this time with her by choice. No one was forcing him to do it. Besides, Sansa thought he had liked it. If Sandor thought their age difference was such a big deal, then he should never have asked to be her friend. He should have never have called her phone number. He should have never asked to be a part of her life. Yes, Sansa had asked him first, but Sandor had rejected her—and then he had called _her_ and asked _her_ if they could be friends, so how was any of this _her_ fault? How was she the one who was blurring the lines between acceptable and unacceptable, and why was it even considered unacceptable to Sandor to _begin_ with?

 

Wiping the tears from her eyes, Sansa pulled her phone out of her little purse and scrolled through it for the first person she figured she could trust to call to come pick her up from the side of the road. She tried calling Gendry first, but it went to voicemail after a few rings. Sansa then tried Margaery, but that went to voicemail immediately, which meant Margaery’s phone was off. Sansa gulped past the buildup in her throat, scrolled through her phone, and ended up staring down at the last possible number she should be calling.

 

She dialed it, and he picked up immediately. “Hi,” Sansa said through her tears, and he recognized her voice right away. “I need a ride. Can you come pick me up, please?” He asked for her address, and Sansa told him the corner of the street, and he said he would be there in a few minutes. Sansa put her phone away and clutched her dress in her hands. She looked down at it, realizing there were green paint stains on it because of her hands, and she started crying all over again. Her dress was ruined. Sansa really loved this dress, too.

 

After some time of waiting, Sansa heard the sound of a siren ringing down the street, getting louder and louder as it drew closer, until a police car pulled up to the edge of the street and parked right across from her. Sansa looked up from the steps she was sitting on, and Jaime got out of the vehicle, shutting the door behind himself. There was a look of shock on his face, but he was calm. He hurried over to her, bent down and tried to survey her condition. She probably looked like a right mess, what with the messed up old shirt she was wearing, her ruined dress in her hands, and the paint on her. Sansa saw him swallow past something in his throat.

 

Tentatively, Jaime held his hand out to her, but he made no move to touch her. “Are you all right, Sansa?”

 

Sansa slowly nodded her head. “I’m fine,” she whispered, though her voice cracked. “I just need a ride home, please.” She looked at his outstretched hand for a moment before she accepted it, and Jaime helped her walk over to the police vehicle. He opened the door for her, guided her inside, and gently closed it behind her. Sansa waited patiently for him to circle the car and get in as well. Jaime shut the door and buckled up, and Sansa remembered to buckle up, too. It was so _stupid_ , but she thought of that first night that she and Sandor hung out together and she forgot to buckle up and Sandor made that cute joke about it—and she started crying all over again in the passenger seat of Jaime’s police car.

 

Jaime was quiet at first, not bothering to interrupt her. He drove off slowly from the curb, not using the sirens this time, and pulled off into the street. Sansa stopped crying eventually, and she leaned her head against the window of the car as they drove through the streets. Her mind was starting to go numb from all of the crying she had been doing. Sansa just didn’t want to think anymore. She didn’t even know if she would ever see Sandor again. He had been talking about bringing her home again like . . . like . . .

 

No, Sansa didn’t even want to think about that.

 

“Did something happen?” Jaime ventured hesitantly, using a soft voice so as to not startle her, and Sansa sniffed as she looked over at him. He sounded so worried about her, and Sansa felt horrible for how they treated him in the bookstore. Jaime wasn’t a bad guy. He was only trying to look out for her. Sansa knew that, and she was so emotional that her face betrayed her yet again as it twisted into another pained expression.

 

“I’m sorry, Uncle Jaime,” Sansa suddenly blurted out. “I’m so sorry about how I treated you in the bookstore that day. I know you were only looking out for me and Arya—”

 

“Oh, no,” Jaime said softly. “No, no, Sansa don’t blame yourself for that. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s . . . don’t worry about it. It’s in the past.”

 

Sansa was a mess. She was an absolute mess. “But I should have listened to you—”

 

“Sansa,” Jaime suddenly cut her off, and he was talking more firmly now. “Did . . . did something happen?”

 

Sansa brought her legs up in the seat and hugged her arms around them, leaning her head on her knees. She shook her head despite the fact that she was still crying, and the snot in her nose made her barely audible. “I don’t want to talk about it, Uncle Jaime. Please, I just want to go home.”

 

Jaime tensed up in the seat beside her, his hands gripping the steering wheel even harder, but Sansa didn’t really think about it and she didn’t really care either. “You know,” Jaime ventured once more, only this time more carefully, “if you want, we can go by the station, but only if you want to . . . ”

 

“No,” Sansa said flatly, “I don’t want to.”

 

There was nothing at the station, anyway. Why did he want to go by the station? Unless it was someone’s birthday and they were serving cake and ice cream, Sansa didn’t want to go. She remembered once when it was Brienne’s birthday, and Jaime took her up there to eat cake and ice cream with everybody. That was a good day, Sansa thought with a smile, but her head was turned away from Jaime now and her eyes were staring outside of the police car window as the scenery flew by outside.

 

Eventually, they reached her house. Sansa had long since stopped crying, and she checked her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were a mess, and her cheeks were red, but other than that and the paint in her hair, she looked fine. She gathered her things and made to get out of the car when she stopped and looked back at Jaime.

 

“Thank you, Uncle Jaime, for the ride,” Sansa told him, and she tried to smile at him. Jaime tried to smile back as well, but it was weak like hers.

 

“You’re welcome, Sansa,” Jaime said, and he tilted his head toward her with a meaningful look in his eyes. “Call me if you need me, okay?”

 

Sansa nodded at him, and then she turned to get out of the car. Sansa shut the door behind her. She walked across the lawn to her house and went inside without being stopped along the way. Nobody was downstairs, and she doubted her parents were even home right now, and Bran and Rickon were probably with them, wherever they went for the day. Sansa walked right up to her room and wished Arya wasn’t at camp right now. Sansa really needed someone to talk to, but Arya was at camp and phones weren’t allowed at camp, so the moment she left for it like she left for it last summer, the two of them were separated until summer was over and school was back in session. Despite that, Sansa would find a way to talk to Arya about all of this, even if she had to convince Mum and Dad to drive her up to Arya’s camp for a visit one day. Either way, she wouldn’t be talking to Arya today. That was for sure.

 

For some reason, Sansa wasn’t so sure she wanted to talk about it with Margaery. Margaery really didn’t know the whole story. Sansa never talked to her about it, even if Margaery did know what little she knew from Loras because of that incident over at Maegor’s Holdfast. Sansa sighed at herself, and then she went to take a shower to get cleaned up. It took a lot of scrubbing to get the paint out, and even then her fingers were still stained green.

 

She emerged from the shower, put on some new clothes, and was working on combing the tangles out of her hair when it hit her. Sansa’s eyes went wide as a small smile spread over her face. Of course, she didn’t have to talk to anyone about what happened to feel better about it. What she needed to do was to have fun and try her best to _forget_ about it, and Sansa knew just the people for that.

 

When she was done with her hair, she scooped up her phone and dialed one of the numbers in it. It rang a few times, but no one answered and it went straight to voicemail. Sansa frowned, pulling the phone away from her ear. She dialed a second number in her phone, hoping this one worked. Where one of them was, the other one was. They were like twins conjoined at the hips, even if one of them was only an adopted brother. They might as well as have been born twins. After a few rings, someone finally picked up.

 

“Yello!” came a chipper voice through the line. “This is Theon Greyjoy’s Wet ‘n’ Wild Slip ‘n’ Slide, how may I help _you_?”

 

“Theon,” Sansa said, raising her eyebrows, even though he couldn’t see it, “this is your personal cell phone number. What kind of greeting is that?”

 

“It’s a greeting for all of the lovely ladies who call me twenty-four seven, my darling Sansa,” Theon replied happily. “Anyways! What’s up, sis?”

 

“I was trying to call Robb, but there was no answer—”

 

“Oh, right, he’s in the pool,” Theon said. “Right now, actually, he’s about to do a cannonball, so if you could just hold on a moment while I cover up my phone—”

 

Sansa heard a whole wave of people chanting, “Cannonball! Cannonball! Cannonball!” and then she heard what sounded suspiciously like a war call coming from her brother, Robb, and then the sound of a crash of water flying everywhere. There were hoots and hollers and cheering everywhere in the background. She then heard Theon hooting in approval, shouting, “That was _amazing_ , Robb! King of the Pool! King of the Pool!”

 

All of a sudden, the whole crowd at the other end of the line started cheering right along with Theon, chanting, “King of the Pool! King of the Pool! King of the Pool!” Sansa rolled her eyes on her end of the phone, silently wondering when Theon was going to acknowledge her again. It took a few more moments of chanting and hollering, but eventually, he lifted the phone back to his ear.

 

“Anyways,” Theon said again, “you want to talk to Robb?”

 

“Well, actually,” Sansa told him, “I was kind of hoping I could, I dunno, hang out with you and Robb for a couple of days this week or something. I’m just really bored at the house all by myself, and everyone is either busy or I can’t seem to get a hold of anyone—”

 

“Oh!” Theon exclaimed. “The darling Sansa wants to join our miraculous pool parties this summer? Well, I do declare! Sure, why not? I mean, we can’t come get you right now. I’ve had a few too many wine coolers, if you know what I mean, and Robb is snogging Jeyne in the pool right now. You know he’ll kill me if I interrupt him and his lady love, but sure! We can make a week of it! Ooh, we’re hitting the beach on Saturday, too! Robb wants to go skinny dipping again to fuck with the coppers.” Theon laughed at this, and then he paused for a moment. “Well, you might have to sit out for that one, Sansa, but the more the merrier!”

 

Sansa found herself grinning at his answer. It was perfect. It was just what she needed to hear. “That’s wonderful!” she told him. “I’d love to join you both. I haven’t seen either of you in a while, and it’d be nice to spend some time with you two.”

 

“Awesome, love!” Theon told her. “How about we swing by tomorrow and pick you up?”

 

“That sounds wonderful,” Sansa answered him, and she heard Theon laughing through the phone.

 

“Great!” he said. “We’ll see you, then!”

 

The phone line clicked dead, and Sansa found herself still smiling as she lowered it from her ear. There was something infectious about Theon’s silly nature, and it always put a smile on her face. Robb and Theon weren’t the most serious brothers in the world, not like Jon was, but they were still wonderful to hang around if you needed to forget about something. Those two moved a thousand miles per minute, and they made the most out of life. While Jon was busy studying and taking extra classes over the summer, Robb and Theon were partying the summer away.

 

It was just the sort of distraction that Sansa needed in her life right now, and Robb and Theon were just the people to give it to her. Spending a week with them would be a wonderful getaway from all of this mess in her head. Besides, aside from her visit to the pier with Sandor, Sansa hadn’t been to any beaches or pools this summer, and that was a terrible waste of summertime.

 

Sansa walked over to her ruined dress, which she had laid out over the back of a chair, and sighed deeply at the paint stains on it. She ought to throw it away. It was ruined, anyway, but Sansa picked it up and gently folded it to put it away at the top of her closet for now. She really didn’t want to throw it away. Even with the paint stains, it was pretty dress. Maybe she could find a way to fix it later.

 

With the dress tucked away, Sansa walked over to find the duck soap so she could put that away, too—when she realized she had never picked it up from Sandor’s bathroom counter as she had grabbed her dress, which meant it was still in Sandor’s apartment. Her heart suddenly fell again, and Sansa felt tears stinging in the back of her eyes once more. She quickly brought her hand to her face to dash them away before they even fell.

 

She had really wanted that duck soap, too.

 

 


	18. If It Makes Your Life Unbearable

_* * *_

 

Sansa wasn’t answering her phone. Sandor had given it a day to let her as well as himself cool off, and then he had tried calling her. It had rung and rung and rung, and then it had gone straight to voicemail afterwards. Sandor wasn’t going to text her. He didn’t care for technology enough to do that. The most technological advanced things in his apartment were the television set and the microwave. Besides, if Sansa wasn’t answering her phone calls, why would she answer a text? Sandor had tried calling her the next day after that and the day after that, but both times with the same results. He started to get fidgety. He was agitated. He was angry, and she was ignoring him.

 

Sandor found her little duck soap still sitting on the counter in his bathroom. She must have forgotten it in her rush to get out of his apartment. He clutched the box in his hand, staring down at it, and then he suddenly threw it with a force he didn’t know he had in him. It collided with the shower door, rattled it, and fell down to the floor. Sandor clutched his head in his hands afterwards, and though he would never admit it out loud to anybody ever, there were fucking tears in his eyes that night.

 

By the fourth day, Sandor went to work at the pub as usual, but Asha had been noticing the change in his demeanor over the last few days, and that night as they were closing up together she finally commented on it. She had a very straightforward way about her, which was refreshing but annoying at the same time. Asha wasn’t a nosey person by any means, but she was blunt and honest, and she had an opinion on everything—and she gave it whether you wanted to hear it or not.

 

“Lady troubles?” Asha asked Sandor as she wiped the bar down that night, and Sandor exhaled a deep breath at that because he hadn’t told her anything at all and somehow she knew what was bothering him. He glanced over at her, not even bothering to disguise his annoyance at the very personal question she had just asked him. Asha was wearing a sleeveless top tonight to show off the colorful array of tattoos on her arms, and the detailed tattoo of an axe on her right shoulder flexed with the muscles in her arm as she wiped the counter down. She jokingly referred to it as her ‘husband.’ Sandor had no idea why, and he had never bothered to ask her either.

 

“I’m not talking with you about this,” he shot back bluntly, and went back to stocking the glasses back up on the shelves.

 

“You should buy her flowers,” Asha continued, ignoring his statement about not wanting to talk about it. “Women love flowers. Personally, I love a good hard fuck, but that’s not everybody’s cup of tea. Most women love flowers, so you should buy her those.”

 

Sandor paused what he was doing, blinking in utter disbelief at his reflection in the mirror. He was going to pretend he did not just hear that come out of her mouth. “I just said I’m not talking about this with you,” he repeated himself, and Sandor went back to stocking the glasses again.

 

“You could try a box of chocolates,” Asha suddenly suggested, ignoring him yet again. “Chocolate is supposed to be an aphrodisiac, isn’t it?”

 

“Fucking hell, Asha, shut the _fuck_ up,” Sandor growled, slamming one of the glasses down on the countertop to get her attention.

 

“All right, big boy,” Asha said, shooting a wary sideways glance at him. “Calm down. You’re way too wound up. Maybe you ought to give her a good hard fuck. Sounds like you _need_ it.”

 

Suddenly, Sandor rolled his head back and then dropped it forward onto the counter. He banged his forehead against the counter a few times, maybe only two or three times, before slapping his hands against the counter and raising his head again. “I’m going home early,” Sandor told her all of a sudden in a voice that sounded a bit too chipper, even for him, and he grabbed his jacket from behind the counter and circled around the end of the bar to get to the other side. “Can you finish closing up tonight by yourself?” he asked Asha without looking at her.

 

“Sure thing, boss,” Asha said to him. As he was making for the exit, she called out, “Go get her, big boy!”

 

Sandor would have hit his head against the door on his way out, but really, he didn’t want to give himself a concussion tonight.

 

He drove home in the silence of his vehicle, and when he got inside of his apartment, he went through his usual routine of emptying his pockets onto the kitchen counter and slipped off his jacket, throwing it onto the back of the couch. It was well past two in the morning, but Sandor realized with a sinking feeling in his stomach and a nervous twitch of his fingers that he was craving the abyss of alcohol. It was that old familiar thirst fighting its way up through his mind, telling him to drown himself in another fucking bottle and just forget about the world. He had let Sansa get in under his skin, and now that she was ignoring him, it brought up the old fears of abandonment, distrust, and betrayal from his childhood. Those fears were creeping up on him again, slithering their way into his mind, and telling him the only way he could deal with this was with a drink.

 

It wasn’t fair what she was doing to him. Sandor was trying to be a better person these days. He was trying to make a change. Not that he had ever been involved with a teenager before, but he had done a lot of fucked up shit in his life and he was trying his hardest not to do _more_ fucked up shit. Living a balanced life was hard enough as it was without her trying to tempt him into another goddamn mistake. Sandor enjoyed her company, and he liked her as a friend, but he was also deeply attracted to her and it was wearing away at his conscience.

 

First of all, she was a teenager, and teenagers were notorious for change. Even if something happened between them, some kind of fling or summertime relationship, how was it going to last? That was the thing, it wasn’t. She was attracted to him now, but a few months down the line, Sansa was going to realize she didn’t want to keep doing the same thing with him. She was going to move on with her life. She was going to go to college, date different men, and realize there was more out there than just him. The thrill of dating an older man would pass, and her life would go on without him in it.

 

Sandor, however, would end up a lot more emotionally invested than that. He knew it because he was already getting emotionally invested, or he wouldn’t be craving alcohol because Sansa was ignoring his phone calls. An unexpected friendship and a single kiss, and he was already unhinged like a door hit over and over with a battering ram from hell. There hadn’t even been any sex, not that he needed it to end up feeling like this. As Elder Brother had said to him during that private session two months ago, sex meant nothing to Sandor. It was just a thing, an action for release. It wasn’t anything meaningful. Emotions, however, now those were going to kill him. They were going to lay him out flat in front of the train and tie him to the tracks, and he wasn’t going to be able to move out of the way as it came rushing towards him.

 

He was already attached, Sandor realized, as he started pacing around his apartment at three in the morning and looking for little things to do to occupy his hands and his mind. He tried to block out his thoughts, but he just couldn’t do it. Sandor couldn’t get rid of the little voice in the back of his head, trying to urge him towards just having a fucking drink to drown it all away. He could forget about Sansa if he just picked up a bottle and drank until he blacked out. He would forget all about her and this entire mess he had gotten himself into for calling her fucking phone number in the first place. Why hadn’t he just _listened_ to Elder Brother when the man said that he wasn’t suggesting for Sandor make friends with this girl?

 

Sandor froze from pacing his apartment all of a sudden. That was it. _That was it_ , he told himself.

 

His feet took him back to the kitchen counter, and he scooped up his phone and dialed Elder Brother’s number. It was three in the morning, and he was going to wake him up in the middle of the night, but Elder Brother was his sponsor and he fucking needed to be _sponsored_ right now. Besides, Elder Brother had always told Sandor to give him a call in case he felt like he was going to slip up with alcohol, and he was going to slip up with it tonight if somebody didn’t talk him out of it really fast. The phone rang a few times and almost went to voicemail, but it picked up and Elder Brother’s familiar voice came through the line.

 

“Hello?” Elder Brother asked, sounding just a little bit groggy, but not at all pissed off. Sandor was thankful for that.

 

“I’m about to have a fucking drink,” Sandor told him.

 

That woke up Elder Brother really fast.

 

“Come on over,” Elder Brother told him, sounding wide awake now. “I’ll put some tea on the pot. It’ll be waiting for you when you get here.”

 

“Okay,” Sandor said, and he hung up the phone, snatched up his keys and jacket again, and made for the door.

 

He drove over to Elder Brother’s house, a nice and quaint little place on Quiet Isle Road, parked the car in the driveway behind the vehicle already there, and walked right up to the front door. Elder Brother opened the door before Sandor even reached it, holding it open to let the other man pass through into his home. Elder Brother led Sandor to the kitchen. He already had two chairs pulled out at his small and plain dining table—Elder Brother was not a flashy man by any means, but a very simple man—and two cups of chamomile tea were already prepared and sitting on the table.

 

Sandor sat down in one of the chairs and picked up one of the cups of tea to give his hands something to do. He took a sip of the hot tea as Elder Brother sat down across from him in the other pulled out chair. It tasted pretty good, but it was as hot as hell. Sandor held the cup, anyway.

 

“So,” Elder Brother said, slowly lifting his own cup for a sip of the tea, “what’s going on, Sandor?”

 

Sandor glanced down at his lap. How did he tell Elder Brother about all of this? He had been hiding it from him for the longest time, and it made him feel like a liar. He never lied to Elder Brother without the other man getting him to spill the truth afterwards, and Sandor felt like the worst person in the world whenever he lied to Elder Brother. That man had a way of looking at you that made you feel like utter shit for not being honest with him from the get-go. Sandor took a deep breath to try and calm his shaking nerves—they were shaking so bad the cup was rattling in his hands—and thought of how to start the wording for everything he needed to say.

 

“I’ve been seeing someone—” Sandor began, but Elder Brother cut him off.

 

“The young girl you came to me about two months ago,” Elder Brother said matter-of-factly, giving Sandor one of his ‘I’ve known all along’ looks.

 

Sandor’s mouth dropped open. “How did you know?”

 

“You’re a horrible liar, Sandor,” Elder Brother told him, taking another sip of his tea and looking at Sandor over the rim of his cup. “Your eyes give everything away, no matter what face you try to put on to cover it all up.”

 

“I always thought I was a good liar,” Sandor said, and he meant it.

 

“Maybe you are,” Elder Brother answered with a shrug of his shoulders, “but I’m a better reader of people than you are a liar, so it invalidates it.”

 

“Fucking hell,” Sandor swore, looking away from Elder Brother.

 

“Did something happen between you and . . . ” Elder Brother asked, pausing halfway through his sentence, “ . . . this young lady?”

 

“Not like that,” Sandor said quickly.

 

“Not like what?”

 

“Nothing sexual,” Sandor told him, meeting Elder Brother’s eyes again.

 

“What happened, then?” Elder Brother asked him calmly, and there was no judgment in the other man’s eyes, and for that, Sandor was grateful.

 

Sandor looked down again, swallowing past a lump in his throat, and he gave Elder Brother a brief rundown of the time he had been spending with Sansa over the last two months. He told Elder Brother about his attraction to her, and he told him about the kiss that happened and the following fight, and then he told him about the last few days in which Sansa had been ignoring his phone calls. It was all very weird to be telling this to his sponsor, but Elder Brother was a man of the faith, and if Elder Brother couldn’t give him good advice regarding this situation, then no one could.

 

Elder Brother was quiet for a long time after Sandor had finished with his story, and Sandor watched in silence as the other man brought his cup of tea to his lips for another sip. Elder Brother had a deeply contemplative look on his face, and finally, he put down his cup on the table and met Sandor’s eyes across the short distance between them. “I think the only way you will sort this out for yourself is by talking with her and having a discussion with her about it, but if she is ignoring your calls, then there is nothing you can do about that.”

 

Sandor narrowed his eyes in confusion. “You’d recommend me talking to her instead of just,” Sandor waved his hand dismissively as this, “ignoring her and walking away from all of this?”

 

“While I do not recommend being involved with a young woman her age,” Elder Brother said, giving Sandor a pointed look, “ignoring her will only make it worse. Regardless of her age, whether she is young, old, or middle-aged, communication is essential to our understanding. If we do not communicate with each other as God intended for us to do, we do not progress forward with our minds. So, yes, I do recommend a positive form of communication to take place in order for you to sort through this, but I don’t see how that is going to happen.” Elder Brother cleared his throat, leaning forward in his chair and keeping eye contact with Sandor. “What I _can_ recommend after that,” he added, “is finding something positive to do with your time that takes your mind off of this and puts you into a different perspective, and I have just the recommendation that I believe will be very good for you, Sandor.”

 

“What’s that?” Sandor asked, feeling a little wary of what might be coming next.

 

“I have some friends over at a youth camp,” Elder Brother began, “and recently, one of their volunteer counselors has injured himself and was removed from his position for recovery. We can go up there tomorrow, you and me, and we’ll sign you up as a volunteer counselor. It’ll be good for you, Sandor. It’s a camp for troubled teens, and I think spending time with them will open your eyes to your own problems as well, and helping them through theirs will help you through yours. How does that sound?”

 

Sandor’s eyes had slowly gone wide through all of this. “What’s the name of this camp?”

 

“Crossroads Camp,” Elder Brother told him, and there was a chipper note to his usually solemn voice. “It is run by my friend, Syrio Forel. He is a wonderful youth instructor. You will get along with him as well as all of the other youth counselors.”

 

Sandor’s eyes were still wide with disbelief, and he began shaking his head. “I can’t do that—”

 

“Nonsense,” Elder Brother said, standing up from his chair and pointing down at Sandor. “You can, and you will. You may stay here tonight. I have an extra bedroom for guests like yourself who call me in the middle of the night with their troubles.” He gave Sandor another pointed look before turning around and gesturing at Sandor to follow him. “I’ll show you where it is,” Elder Brother added as he walked away. Sandor sighed, got up from the table, and followed the other man to the guest bedroom.

 

Sandor stayed the night in Elder Brother’s house, and he was awoken bright and early in the morning by Elder Brother. Elder Brother just happened to have extra toothbrushes and supplies for guests, and Sandor got cleaned up in the morning before they both got into their respective vehicles. Sandor backed out of the driveway to let Elder Brother go first, and he followed the man all the way through the city to the edge of town until all of the buildings vanished and there was nothing but lush green scenery to either side of Trident Highway.

 

Eventually, there were signs along the way mentioning the camp grounds. Elder Brother slowed down ahead of him, and Sandor looked out to see a large wooden sign that said _Crossroads Camp for Troubled Teens_. Sandor wanted to drop his head right onto his steering wheel and crash his vehicle rather than go inside, but he followed Elder Brother like he said he would until they reached a parking lot within the camp grounds and parked their vehicles. This was a nightmare, Sandor thought, but at least he wasn’t thinking about drinking anymore. He was thinking about how he was going to survive being surrounded by annoying fucking teenagers all the time.

 

Elder Brother led Sandor to the main office, and Sandor let the other man do the talking. They signed him in and got his information, identification, and asked him to fill out a fucking application for it. There were reference forms as well. Sandor was told they would call him in for an interview once they reviewed everything, and it would take a few days at most. Elder Brother watched Sandor the entire time, probably making sure Sandor wasn’t thinking about backing out of this. This was fucking ridiculous, Sandor thought. In the meantime while he was waiting on them to get back to him, they said, he could complete the online course needed for becoming a youth counselor.

 

Sandor’s eyes went wide at that. “There’s a fucking course?” he asked, and the lady behind the desk widened her eyes as well, glancing warily over at Elder Brother. Elder Brother cleared his throat and walked over to the counter, clasping Sandor on the shoulder.

 

“My friend is very nervous,” Elder Brother informed her. “If you will give me the information, I will make sure he completes it before the interview.”

 

The lady nodded her head, giving Elder Brother the needed information, and then she shot another wary sideways glance at Sandor. Sandor wanted to rub his hand over his face and sigh in frustration, but he didn’t want to give a bad impression. Fuck, if Sansa didn’t drive him to drinking, this _definitely_ fucking would. What the hell was Elder Brother thinking?

 

When they left the camp grounds, Elder Brother made sure Sandor finished the fucking online course, which didn’t take that long anyway. The very next day he received a call from the camp, and they asked him to come out to the grounds again. Sandor almost told them to shove his applicant forms up their asses, but then he remembered he was doing this because Elder Brother told him to, and Elder Brother was always right, so Sandor agreed and said he would be there soon.

 

The interview must have gone well because they told him he was on board, and he passed the online course. Sandor thought he might not have if not for Elder Brother, but he didn’t say that part out loud. They asked him when he was available, and he told them he ran a pub, so he could do some early daytime hours or he could volunteer on his days off, but he couldn’t do weekends at all. They made a schedule for him, and then he was sent off to get a uniform. _That_ got Sandor’s attention.

 

“Wait, _what_ —uniform?” Sandor asked the young lady leading him down the hallway.

 

“Yes,” she said, “all youth counselors wear a uniform on duty up here.”

 

Sandor looked down at what she was wearing, wondering if that was the uniform. Every adult up here was wearing knee length dark green shorts, which looked like Capri pants on the women, and collared white polo shirts with green trim on the ends of the sleeves and a green collar and a logo for the camp on the left side of the chest.

 

This was a fucking nightmare, Sandor thought, and not for the first time since he stepped foot on the goddamn camp grounds. If he made it out of this alive, he was going to kill Elder Brother for it. Okay, maybe he wouldn’t kill him, but fucking hell, he was going to get that man back for this shit.

 

The lady asked him his sizes, picked out his uniform for him, and handed it to him. Sandor looked down at it, wishing he was back home or at the pub—anything but _this_. The lady left the room, and Sandor sighed in frustration. He put on the fucking uniform and put his personal things in one of lockers in the room, and when he opened the door to leave the room, the lady was waiting right outside for him.

 

“I will lead you to the other youth counselors,” she said. “We’re on a break right now, so it’ll give you a few moments to acquaint yourself with everybody.”

 

She was talking, but all Sandor heard was _blah blah blah_. He followed the damn woman, whose name he couldn’t remember, out onto the grounds into what looked like a picnic table area. There were a couple of adults out here, some of them older and some of them younger, but one of them in particular grabbed Sandor’s attention and his eyes went dangerously wide at the sight of her _here_.

 

The enormously tall blonde woman turned around with her hands on her hips, and she suddenly widened her eyes at the sight of him as well. Her jaw dropped open until she realized it was hanging open, and she closed it, clearing her throat as she stared at Sandor. It was Jaime’s partner, the policewoman whose name was Brienne, and the first thing that came to Sandor’s mind was the uncomfortable confrontation with her on the street that night she had followed him from the beach back to his apartment.

 

“Sandor,” Brienne finally said, using his first name instead of his last name like he expected of her, and she cleared her throat again, shaking her head in disbelief. “What are you doing here?”

 

“I could ask you the same thing,” Sandor answered, eyeing her warily.

 

“I volunteer up here,” Brienne told him, still staring at him in shock. “On my days off. I have for a few years now.”

 

“Well, I’m new,” Sandor said, looking around at the camp grounds. “My sponsor thinks it will be good for me,” he added, and Sandor didn’t know why the fuck he was telling Brienne this, but fuck it, if he was going to make a change, then he might as well do it full circle. He looked back at Brienne. “Shocking, isn’t it?” he asked her, his voice deadpan.

 

Brienne regarded him for a moment, and her expression went from shock to some sort of strange admiration. She slowly shook her head. “No,” Brienne said softly, “not at all.”

 

Sandor looked away from her, and then he nodded his head. “Well, I’m going to scope out the grounds and get a feel for the land,” he told her, and he lifted a hand in a small wave as he walked off. “Good seeing you,” Sandor called out, and at least some part of him meant it since it was under better circumstances than the last time that they saw each other.

 

He was walking across a large patch of land that was nothing but grass with sparse trees as tall as a building here or there in the ground, reaching up high into the sky. The foliage so far up seemed to block out most of the rays of sunlight, but not all of it. If Sandor admitted it to himself, it was actually kind of nice out here. The air was fresh and clean, and just breathing it in was sort of refreshing in way that breathing in the city air wasn’t.

 

All of a sudden, Sandor heard a twig snap. He froze, and turned around, and his eyes went wide yet again from absolute shock at who was standing behind him and holding a neon green and orange Super Soaker high powered water gun.

 

“We meet yet again,” Arya said in strangely deep-voiced imitation of every villain in every James Bond movie ever made.

 

Sandor warily glanced down at the Super Soaker water gun in her hands. “Yeah, hey,” he said, and then he pointed down at the water gun in her hands. “What’s that for?”

 

“You,” Arya answered him in that same smoky villain voice, and her eyes narrowed as she slowly began to circle Sandor. “You hurt my sister, Dog,” she said slowly. “It’s time for some payback.”

 

“Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa,” Sandor suddenly said, holding up both hands. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but—”

 

“Nice try,” Arya said, cutting him off, and she suddenly stopped and held out the nozzle of the Super Soaker towards him, “but you better start running, Dog.”

 

Sandor’s eyes went wide yet again, and he did the only thing he knew to do in a situation like this.

 

He fucking ran.

 

 


	19. We Need to Talk About It

_* * *_

 

After Brienne got home from the camp, it was fairly late into the evening. Jaime wasn’t home yet, so Brienne did the first thing she thought of that she really needed after her day today. She headed straight for the bathroom for a nice long shower to wash off all the dirt and sweat. Today had been an interesting day, to say the least. Brienne was shocked to see Sandor Clegane at Crossroads Camp, but the most amusing surprise had to have been when he emerged back from his ‘scope’ of the lands completely soaked to the bone but holding an empty Super Soaker water gun in his hands. One of the kids must have attacked him with it, but if his possession of it was anything to go by, he must have chased the kid down and got the gun from them. Brienne had laughed when he was no longer within earshot. He looked so comical completely wet like that.

 

She decided she would talk to him next time she saw him at the camp. If anything, and especially since he was new, maybe she could lend him a hand with things. Brienne had been doing youth counseling for years, and if Sandor was new, then he was going to need a hand if he was going to get into the swing of things. Besides, it would help erase all of the uncomfortable awkwardness between the two of them given their history together. If Sandor was going to make an effort to turn over a new leaf, then Brienne was going to look at it as a positive thing. It wasn’t everyday that a person like him tried to change their way of life, but Sandor was really putting some effort into it if this new turn of events was anything to by.

 

Brienne scrubbed herself down really good in the shower when she heard the front door open and close. Jaime must have been home. He had been acting a little strange these last few days ever since he had finally gotten off desk duty. Brienne had been glad for the intervention of desk duty, though. Jaime needed to stop being so focused on Sandor Clegane and Sansa Stark, and the time off of the streets had helped a lot with that. By the end of the first week, Jaime was acting like a completely different person. He was almost back to his old self, cracking jokes and making Brienne laugh instead of yell at him. It was a wonderful change, and Brienne wanted things to stay that way.

 

His behavior these last few days, though, had begun to worry her again. Jaime was hiding something from her, but Brienne had a notion that it wouldn’t be long before Jaime spilled the beans to her about whatever it was. Jaime wasn’t good at keeping his mouth shut. He could do it for a few days, a blessing that learning patience had taught him, but eventually he caved in with the pressure and everything came out all at once. That was Jaime. Brienne sighed to herself at that thought. She wouldn’t love him if he wasn’t Jaime, but sometimes Jaime had some really annoying habits.

 

She peeked her head around the corner of the shower curtain, calling out to him through the open door of the bathroom. “Hey, Jaime . . . ” Brienne said in a sing-song voice, unable to stop a small smile from creeping onto her face. “I’m in the shower . . . ”

 

 _That_ got his attention for sure. Brienne heard him coming down the hallway in a hurry, and then he was standing in the bathroom doorway in complete uniform. Damn, he was sexy in uniform. She only had her head peeked around the shower curtain, but Jaime was tilting his head and looking in her direction with an appreciative gaze on his face. He smirked at her, biting down on the corner of his bottom lip, and made a little motion with his hand to indicate she should pull the whole curtain back out of his way.

 

“You should, uh, give me a better view of the rest of your assets,” Jaime said in a sly voice, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe as he crossed one ankle over the other. He was grinning at her now.

 

Brienne raised her eyebrows, smiling at that as well. “Oh, should I?” she asked, and she made a thoughtful expression as she pretended to think about it. “Or,” Brienne added all of a sudden, “you should join me.” She grinned at that, quickly disappearing around her side of the shower curtain.

 

Brienne almost laughed out loud as she heard Jaime hurrying to get out of his uniform. She could hear him dropping his heavy work shoes onto the bathroom floor’s tiles as well as everything else before he joined her in the shower. They did a few unmentionable things before cleaning up together, and Brienne even washed Jaime’s hair for him. He got soap in his eyes and whined about it, but Brienne just laughed at him and told him to quit being a baby. Once they were done, they both got out and grabbed towels to dry off with, but as soon as Jaime’s towel was around his waist, he was already grabbing Brienne for another kiss and dragging her down the hallway towards their bedroom.

 

Really, if they kept going at this rate, it was going to be a long night.

 

Brienne and Jaime were lying on the bed together, towels forsaken somewhere on the floor some time ago and their hair still damp, with Brienne on her back and Jaime lying beside her with his head against her chest and his arm around her waist. Brienne was sufficiently out of breath, as was Jaime, but he was abnormally quiet, and that just wasn’t like Jaime at all. Even after sex, he was a chatterbox. There was one time Brienne actually had to hit him over the head to get him to shut up so she could go to sleep already.

 

Her fingers were playing with his hair again—Jaime had really pretty hair, and she liked touching it—when Jaime finally broke the silence with the worst possible thing he could say after sex.

 

“I’m worried about Sansa,” he said, and Brienne’s head shot up from the bed to glare at the top of Jaime’s head. Her fingers immediately stopped playing in his hair.

 

“Seriously?” Brienne asked. “That’s the first thing that comes out of your mouth afterwards?”

 

Jaime lifted up his head, innocent shock in his eyes. “What? What’s wrong with that?”

 

“Sansa?” she asked, disbelief in her voice as well as her wide eyes. “You’re thinking about _Sansa_?”

 

“Oh, god, not like _that_ ,” Jaime shot back, giving her a horrified look. He shook his head, and suddenly the look faded from his face. “There’s just—well, there’s something I haven’t told you.”

 

Brienne narrowed her eyes. “What’s that?” she deadpanned.

 

Jaime turned over on his stomach beside her, propping himself up on his forearms against the bed. He was looking at her with a pained expression on his face, and then he reached up with one of his hands and nervously scratched the side of his head. “It’s just, well, she called me a few days ago. She was stranded on the side of the road a few blocks down from Sandor Clegane’s apartment—”

 

“Oh, _god_ ,” Brienne said, cutting him off as she rolled her eyes.

 

“Now, hear me out,” Jaime said, sounding hurt at her response. “She wasn’t herself, Brienne. She was a crying mess, sitting on the steps of some rundown place with nothing but a torn up and too large shirt on her, and she was holding a ruined dress in her hands. I could barely get her to say two sentences to me. When I asked her if something happened, she said she didn’t want to talk about it.”

 

“What are you saying?” Brienne asked carefully, listening now. She wasn’t sure if she liked what she was hearing or where this was going. Brienne started to get a really nervous feeling in her chest like butterflies fluttering around her heart, only it tickled her with anxiety instead of amusement.

 

“I’m saying . . . doesn’t that sound like a . . . rape victim, Brienne?” Jaime asked in a very slow voice, and Brienne saw the war behind his eyes that he was trying to fight with himself over what to do about the situation.

 

Brienne sighed deeply, dropping her head to the bed. “Did Sansa say anything at all?” she asked him, calmer this time.

 

“No, she just started apologizing about how she treated me at the bookstore, but she didn’t do anything that day.” Jaime was quiet for a moment. “She said, ‘I should’ve listened to you,’ though. She did say that.”

 

The last thing Brienne wanted was for Jaime to get involved with this, though. She was glad he had done nothing about yet, anyway. It showed some progress where his rashness was concerned. Jaime had a bad habit of rushing straight forward into things without thinking and creating a mess bigger than what had been there to begin with. “It could be anything,” she said, but she wasn’t going to immediately dismiss the possibility of what Jaime had suggested to her. Brienne had dealt with rape victims before, and it sounded like a lot of the cases she had encountered along the way.

 

However, some part of her didn’t think that was what had happened. Sandor didn’t seem like the type of man to do anything like that, and anything in the world could make a young teenage girl start crying, so she resolved the only way to figure out what was truly going on was to have a personal talk with Sansa about it. With Brienne being a woman and having received special training in dealing with rape victims, she would have better luck than Jaime if she sat down with Sansa to have a talk with her.

 

“I will talk to Sansa about it,” Brienne said. “You stay out of it. If something happened, she would be more likely to tell me than you. She needs a woman to talk to, not a man, not if something like that happened to her, but I doubt anything has. It doesn’t sound like Sandor to force himself on her. He has no record of rape or domestic violence or assault against women, like you said, so why now? Why now when he’s trying to change?”

 

“Who said he was trying to change?” Jaime asked, and he sounded a little bit peeved at that suggestion.

 

Brienne raised her head again, glaring at Jaime. “I do, because he volunteers over at the Crossroads Camp for Troubled Teens. The same place where I volunteer.”

 

Jaime’s eyes grew as big as saucers. “You didn’t tell me he volunteered over there,” he said, and there was an accusing note in his tone.

 

Even though Sandor was new to the camp and today had only been his first day, Brienne was annoyed enough with Jaime not to mention that. Instead, she shot back with, “Well, you never _asked_.”

 

Jaime’s mouth fell open at that. “That’s not fair,” he answered her. “You’re supposed to tell me these things.” He gestured between the two of them. “We’re supposed to _communicate_ —”

 

“Over your obsession with Sandor Clegane?” Brienne asked, raising her eyebrows. “What a riveting conversation that is, let me tell you.” She knew she was being snarky, but she could care less.

 

“Hey!”

 

“Well, it’s the truth,” Brienne said. “Can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

 

“The kitchen is for women,” Jaime shot back, but Brienne knew he didn’t mean it. He was just saying it to get back at her.

 

“Oh, you’ll fit right in with your Prince Charming hair.”

 

“Hey!” Jaime exclaimed again, visibly wounded. “You like my hair . . . ”

 

Brienne lifted a single eyebrow. “Right now, I like the idea of ripping it out of your scalp more than anything,” she said, but she didn’t really mean that either.

 

Jaime gaped at her. He closed his mouth, and then he ran one of his hands slowly over his hair. “Fine,” he said, sounding deadly serious. “You don’t get to touch it anymore.”

 

A glint appeared in Brienne’s eyes at that. “Oh, really?”

 

“Yes, really.”

 

A slow smirk broke out across Brienne’s face as she waited for Jaime to look back at her. When he did, his eyes slowly took on a suspicious quality as he turned his head sideways to gaze at her. Before he could do anything, Brienne launched herself at Jaime and pinned him to the bed—and ruffled the mess out of his hair as he demanded and begged for her to stop it.

 

He was going to hate her until tomorrow for it, but it was totally worth it.

 

 


	20. Breaking Each Other’s Hearts

_* * *_

 

It was late at night and darkness hung in the sky outside, but the house itself was lit up like a neon Christmas tree. Someone had strung colorful neon lights all over the inside of it, which gave the house dark pink, green, and blue undertones everywhere Sansa went inside of it. She had been at the pool all day with Theon, Robb, and Jeyne, and she was feeling the sunburn on her upper body, especially her back and arms. Sansa remembered to put on sun block lotion, but it had only helped so far. The house itself was crowded with people, and Sansa didn’t know where her brothers or Jeyne had gone off to—until a disturbing thought hit her that maybe they were in the bedrooms upstairs. Sansa was going to avoid those. She wasn’t about to give anyone the wrong impression by going into a stranger’s bedroom.

 

Some vulgar dance song was pounding through the house from a stereo system in the sitting room, where Sansa was standing by herself next to one of the walls. Sansa didn’t recognize the singer, nor did she care for the song. There was a group of girls dancing to it on one of the tables, though, and singing along with the lyrics. They all burst out laughing in their drunkenness, nearly falling over themselves. One of the girls actually did fall with a squeal, and one of the boys in the crowd by the table caught her, and two of them started making out immediately.

 

Sansa had been having fun all day, but all of sudden, in the darkness of this stranger’s house, she wasn’t comfortable anymore. Sansa clutched her arms around her chest. She was only wearing a hot pink bikini and a white crochet sarong around her waist. Her towel was in Robb’s jeep, but even then, it was probably still wet. Her hair felt dry like straw, which must have been because of all of the pool water she had been swimming in today. In her little crossbody purse that hung over one of her shoulders and laid against her hip on the opposite side of her body, Sansa suddenly felt her phone buzzing.

 

She opened her purse and pulled out her phone. Her heart leapt up into her throat at the name that showed up on her screen along with his phone number. It was Sandor, calling her yet again. Sansa hit the ignore button on the side of her phone, and tucked it back away into her purse. She wasn’t ready to talk to him just yet, and with that vulgar song pounding in the background of the house, she wasn’t about to answer the phone for him to hear _that_ either. It might give him the totally wrong impression of where she was and what she was doing, which made Sansa more than just a little bit nervous thinking about it.

 

Sandor had been calling her since the first day after the fight, and to be honest, it confused Sansa terribly. After the way he had spoken to her, she had almost figured that he didn’t want to talk to her ever again, but he had been ringing her phone off the hook. There was some small part of her, too, even if it was a bit childish, that liked how it gave her some sense of power when she chose to ignore his calls. After the way Sandor had spoken to her in his apartment, Sansa needed to feel as though she had some kind of control given the circumstances instead of just being the one who was having her strings pulled around in every which direction. Sansa was made to feel like a puppy on a leash guided by Sandor’s choices whenever he decided he was the only adult in the situation, with him telling her when to sit and stay and roll over, and Sansa didn’t like how that made her feel. Sandor wasn’t her boss, and she could make her own decisions.

 

This was her decision right now, but to be honest, Sansa wasn’t entirely enjoying it. The house party here wasn’t her scene, though she had greatly enjoyed her time at the pool, and Sansa was beginning to wish she was back home by now. It was getting late, but given that she was out with her brothers, even if they were sort of irresponsible, her parents seemed to trust her with them anyway into the wee hours of the night. Sansa sighed half out of boredom and half out of exasperation, wishing her brothers would stop whatever ungodly business they were doing upstairs and come back down here to join her and keep her company.

 

It didn’t take long for that to come true. Maybe fifteen minutes after Sansa had that thought, Theon came hurrying down the steps of the staircase and grinning like a madman. He raised his head and spotted Sansa by the wall, threw up his arms and opened his mouth wide enough to stick out his tongue at her, and then he laughed as he cut his way through the crowd towards her. Theon threw an arm around Sansa’s shoulders, and he turned to survey the crowd around them as he spoke to her.

 

“What do you say we get some liquor for tonight?” Theon asked her, leaning in close to Sansa’s ear. “Mum and Dad won’t care if you drink with us, you know. Me and Robb will keep an eye on you!”

 

Sansa wasn’t so sure that was a good idea. After the last time she drank alcohol and puked all over the place, she wasn’t looking for a repeat of that situation. Sansa slowly shook her head as she looked at Theon. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she hollered over the music.

 

Theon grinned wider at that. He must have had the same education as Arya because next he said, “Whenever someone says they don’t think something is a good idea, then they want to do it but they’re hoping you’ll talk them out of it!”

 

Sansa crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a doubtful look. “You know, I’m beginning to believe that saying is total bullshit,” Sansa told him, raising her voice once more over the loud music.

 

Theon’s eyes went wide, and he grabbed Sansa by the shoulders as he turned her to face him fully. “Did you just _curse_?” Theon asked, sounding utterly shocked. “Holy flaming rainbow ass Batman, when the fuck did _you_ start cursing?”

 

Sansa felt her mouth drop open in shock as she realized her own words. “I, um . . . I don’t know!” she answered him, and she started to wonder the same thing herself. Sansa reached for her hair with one of her hands, nervously twirling an auburn tendril around her finger and wondering if it was all of her time spent around Sandor. He did curse a lot. Maybe he was rubbing off on her.

 

Theon clapped her on the shoulder and leaned in to speak close to her ear. “Let me go get Robb and Jeyne!” he said. “I don’t care if they’re fucking, I’ll interrupt them. We should ditch this joint and find something better to do!” Theon shot a million watt grin at Sansa, and then he vanished into the crowd of bodies. A moment later, she saw him ascending the steps on the staircase two at a time before he disappeared from sight again.

 

About five minutes after that, Theon came back down the staircase with Robb and Jeyne Westerling, but Robb and Jeyne were grinning and holding hands, so Theon must have not interrupted anything after all or he’d probably have a bloody nose and Robb and Jeyne wouldn’t look so cute and happy together. All three of them came over to Sansa’s wall, and Jeyne smiled brightly at Sansa along with her brother, Robb.

 

“Hey, sorry about that, Sansa,” Robb told her. “We didn’t mean to leave you down here all by yourself. You could’ve come upstairs with us! We were just playing a game of Twister—and not the naughty kind!” Robb let out a laugh at this. “Anyway, Theon says we ought to head out. Anywhere you want to go, sis?”

 

Sansa was a bit surprised to have Robb ask her what she wanted to do. After all, Sansa had come along with the three of them to do what _they_ wanted to do, and she thought they had all sorts of plans for things lined up. Sansa knew she looked at a loss for words, so she shook her head and said, “It doesn’t matter! We can do whatever you three had planned for the night!”

 

“My darling Sansa!” Theon told her, giving her a pointed look. “We don’t make plans! We just do shit, so c’mon! Pick something, and we’ll get on it!”

 

Sansa laughed because she couldn’t think of anything. “I don’t know!” she repeated. “I can’t think of anything!”

 

“I’ve got it!” Theon called out over the music. “We’ll each name something, and then we’ll Rock Paper Scissors it!”

 

“Perfect!” Robb agreed, turning to Sansa to grin at her. “Sound like a plan?”

 

Sansa laughed again. “Okay, sounds like a plan!”

 

“My vote,” Theon said, “is we pick up some liquor and get pissed!”

 

“My vote,” Robb added, “is we go skinny dipping on the beach!”

 

Sansa raised her eyebrows at both of those options. “Well, my vote,” she said, “is we just go _swimming_ at the beach, no skinny dipping and no drinking until we’re pissed!”

 

“Ah, party pooper!” Robb teased her, laughing, and Theon and Jeyne joined in laughing as well. Sansa couldn’t help it. She laughed right along with them. At least they weren’t mad at her for her normal and slightly boring decision, but Sansa thought she had about all the excitement she could take for one night already.

 

All three of them got in a circle after that, and they held out their fists. Theon called out, “Rock, paper, scissors!” as each of them shook their fists with each word. On the third word, they chose their weapons. Robb chose rock, Sansa chose rock, and Theon chose paper.

 

“Ooh!” Theon suddenly called out, his eyes going wide, and he raised his arms up above his head as he danced around in a circle. “Bitches don’t know what they be talking about!” he sang out. “We getting pissed!”

 

Robb grabbed Jeyne by the hand. “Let’s go to the car, then,” Robb hollered out. “We haven’t got time to lose!”

 

Sansa rolled her eyes at Theon, and then she followed both of her brothers out to Robb’s jeep. There was something about the boys in her family having a thing for jeeps, Sansa thought to herself, as she got into the backseat with Jeyne and buckled her seatbelt. As they started driving down the highway, where to Sansa had no clue, Jeyne said she had to go to the bathroom and since they were not far from their apartment, Robb pulled into their apartment complex and dropped Jeyne off. Jeyne leaned over Robb’s door to give him a kiss.

 

“We’ll be right back, love,” Robb told Jeyne, and she grinned at him and turned to wave at Sansa.

 

“We’ll see you in a bit, darling,” Jeyne told her, and Sansa grinned back at her. Sansa had always liked Jeyne. Jeyne was a sweetheart, even if she was attached to the other side of Robb’s hip that Theon wasn’t already attached to himself. Robb pulled out of the parking space, zooming off down the highway again. It was Kingsroad Highway, and Robb had the top down as Theon began switching through the stations on the radio, which was blaring over the roar of the wind in Sansa’s ears.

 

Eventually, the radio station landed on a modern pop station, and Theon gasped out loud at the current song playing over the radio waves. Sansa was beginning to wonder if Theon hadn’t already had a few wine coolers to drink from the way he was acting. He jumped up in his seat, no seatbelt on, and threw his arms high into the air. “This is my song, Robb! Oh my god, this is my song!” Theon called out over the blaring music and roaring wind. Sansa watched in horror as Theon began _dancing_ as Robb was driving his vehicle down the highway, and Robb was laughing out loud at Theon like it was _funny_.

 

Theon turned around to face Sansa, wiggling his bottom back and forth as he sang and jokingly pointed out to her. “Hey, I just met you, and this is _crazy_ ,” Theon sang, and he leaned forward as if to give Sansa an imaginary piece of paper, “but here’s my number, so call me maybe! All the other boys, they try to _chase_ me! But here’s my number, so call me maybe!”

 

Sansa lowered her face in her hands as if to hide herself and slowly shook her head. This was _so_ embarrassing, even if there was nobody around to see it. God, did it matter? It was going to be embarrassing either way.

 

“Hey, Theon, sit down,” Robb suddenly called out. “We’re almost there. We have to look at least somewhat professional.” Robb slapped the back of Theon’s seat to get his brother’s attention, and Theon glanced around, noticing the seat pat, and sat down without question. He was still wiggling his butt back and forth in the seat, though, and singing along with the song. Robb turned the radio down. “I am definitely not driving up there with this fucking song blaring,” Robb said, and Sansa wondered where they were going yet again.

 

The way on the highway started to look familiar to her, though. She had been this way before. They were in the heart of Kingsland, and when Robb turned into the familiar and unmistakable establishment of warm lighting and dark cherry wood walls, Sansa put her hand to her chest as her heart began pounding inside of her chest like it was going to burst out of her ribcage. Sansa was going to have a heart attack. Her brothers were going to give her a heart attack, and send her into an early grave.

 

Sansa immediately ducked into the floorboard of the backseat.

 

Robb didn’t seem to notice. “Here’s some money, Theon,” Robb told him. “Go in and get the shit, and come back out. Remember, top shelf, buddy. We get the good shit.”

 

“Aye, aye, capt’n!” Theon called out, and Sansa glanced upward to see Theon saluting Robb before he turned around and ran away from her line of sight.

 

“Yeah, we come here all the time,” Robb called out to Sansa as if she was still sitting upright in the backseat. He must have not glanced back yet. “He gives us a good deal for buying in bulk, so we just come here instead of going to the liquor store—hey, where’d you go, Sansa?”

 

“I’m, um, I’ve dropped something,” she said nervously. “Just give me a moment, I’m looking for it . . . ”

 

“Oh, okay,” Robb said, and he started talking again. “Yeah, Mum and Dad totally won’t care if you drink with me and Theon. We should go back to the beach, though. It’s great out here tonight, man. The wind is blowing cool, but it’s still warm. I bet the water feels _amazing_ . . . ”

 

“Ahoy, matey!” Sansa heard Theon call out from a distance away. “I come back bearin’ the treasure of the waves, aye,” Theon said in a fake pirate voice, but then he suddenly sounded like himself again as he added, “but I totally needed help. This shit is _heavy_.”

 

“Oh my god,” Sansa squeaked, and she tried to hide herself under Robb’s chair, but it was no use. There was nowhere to go, and she wasn’t small enough to fit under a seat. _Let it be Steffon or Allard, Steffon or Allard_ , she prayed. _Steffon or Allard_ . . .

 

“Where do you want it?” asked a heartbreakingly familiar voice, and Sansa thought right then she could just _cry_. This was a nightmare, an absolute nightmare worse than anything else she could possibly imagine.

 

Robb popped the trunk, and Sansa’s heart almost exploded with joy. The trunk, good, the trunk. Maybe he wouldn’t see her. Maybe they would get it in the trunk, and get out of here as soon as possible. Sansa heard Theon chattering away, walking to the back of the vehicle. Suddenly, Robb glanced over the back of his seat and down at Sansa.

 

“What are you doing?” Robb asked her, wrinkling his face down at her. “Haven’t you found it yet?”

 

“Not yet,” Sansa whispered, her voice shaking. “Still looking.”

 

Suddenly, a grin burst across Robb’s face. “Aww, you’re shy!” Robb said, hearing the way her voice shook, and Sansa’s eyes went wide with fear. “Hey, Theon!” Robb called out, looking over the seats at the two men loading up the vehicle. “She’s shy!”

 

“Oh my god, seriously?” Theon called back. “That’s so cute! Wait, why is she shy?”

 

“I don’t know,” Robb called back, and he reached down and took Sansa by the arm. “C’mon, get up. Quit hiding! Say hi to people! People are good! Stop being so afraid of them!” Sansa tried to wrestle away from Robb’s grip, her heart beating so fast it was hurting her.

 

“No, Robb, stop it—” she pleaded, but Robb pulled harder.

 

“Oh, come on!” Robb told her, and he was stronger than her, so he yanked her upright by the arm as Theon was circling back around the vehicle with another figure much taller than him. Sansa immediately glanced over in horror, hoping some part of her had imagined this entire situation and if she blinked her eyes, it would all go away, but when she blinked her eyes, Sandor was still staring at her with his mouth half open. He slowly looked at Robb, who was gripping Sansa’s arm, and then at Theon who was standing beside him and laughing—and then the unthinkable happened.

 

Sandor decked Theon right in the face, knocking him to the ground outside of the open passenger door. Sansa screamed, her hand flying to her mouth, and Robb immediately let go of his sister’s arm. “What the _fuck_!” Robb called out. Sandor bent over to grab Theon like he was going to hit him again, and Sansa leaned over the side of Robb’s vehicle, hollering at Sandor as Robb scrambled to get out of it, so Robb didn’t hear her.

 

“Sandor, he’s my _brother_ ,” Sansa hurriedly told him. “They both are! Stop it! _Stop it_!”

 

Sandor had lifted Theon by the front of his shirt, but he froze, turning around to look at Sansa. There was a wild look in his eyes, one Sansa had never seen there before, and she watched helplessly as Robb came around the vehicle and Sandor dropped Theon back to the pavement, slowly walking away from the two of them. Robb could have focused on trying to punch Sandor if he wanted to, but Sansa wondered if her brother knew better than to even try, and Robb bent over Theon instead to help his brother back into the jeep.

 

“Are you fucking _mental_?” Robb shot over his shoulder at Sandor. “What the fuck is your problem, man?”

 

Sandor didn’t say anything, though. His eyes darted between Theon and Robb and then Sansa. He kept backing away until he turned around and went back inside of the pub through a side door instead of the main entrance. Sansa watched him disappear, the door closing behind him, and felt her heart breaking even more. She definitely wanted to cry now. This was a nightmare. An utter, unbelievable nightmare.

 

“Oh my god, Robb,” Theon was saying, and Sansa just barely registered that Theon was crying, “it’s broken, man, I think it’s broken, he broke my nose, oh my god, it’s bleeding—”

 

“Yeah, it’s fucking bleeding, man,” Robb said, buckling Theon in his seat. “We’ve got to get you to a damn hospital. _Fuck_ , what the hell was that?”

 

No one answered Robb, though, as he hurried back around to get into the vehicle. Before Sansa knew it, they were driving off, zooming down the highway to the hospital. Sansa wanted to go back home, fall into her bed, and go to sleep. But first, she wanted to cry, so she went ahead and did that to get it out of the way.

 

When they reached the hospital, Sansa told Robb she was going to call a friend to come pick her up and bring her home. Robb nodded his head, gave her a quick hug, and told her to call him as soon as her friend arrived at the hospital. Sansa waited outside as they went inside, and she picked up her phone and dialed Gendry’s number, praying he would answer this time. Almost immediately, he picked up the phone.

 

“Hello?” Gendry asked, and Sansa smiled at the sound of his voice.

 

“Hey, Gendry,” she said. “I really need a ride home. Can you spare a minute to come get me? I’m at the hospital with my brothers, Robb and Theon. Theon is being admitted.”

 

“Oh, shit,” Gendry said, but he didn’t ask what happened. “Sure thing, Sansa,” he told her. “I’ll be there in a few. Which entrance?”

 

“Emergency,” Sansa answered him.

 

“Okay, be there in a few,” he repeated, and Gendry ended the phone call. Sansa waited outside until Gendry showed up, and then she called Robb to tell him her ride was here like she said she would so he wouldn’t worry about her. Sansa got into Gendry’s vehicle after that, quiet and sullen.

 

The ride was silent for a little bit at first until Gendry commented on her bathing suit. “Went swimming today?” he asked.

 

“Yeah,” Sansa said in a small voice. “It’s been a great day so far until Theon got punched in the nose.”

 

Gendry made a small hissing noise. “Yeah, ouch,” he said. “Sounds like that ruined things pretty quick.”

 

“Oh,” Sansa said slowly, raising her eyebrows, “it did.”

 

“You’ve been crying,” Gendry said, sounding worried about her, and Sansa turned to smile at him.

 

“Yes, but I’ll be all right,” she told him. “It’s just shock over what happened is all. I’ll be fine.”

 

Gendry nodded his head. “Good, good. Oh hey, did Arya tell you the news?”

 

“What news?” Sansa asked him, her curiosity getting the better of her.

 

“Your, uh, guy friend,” Gendry revealed to Sansa. “Sandor? He works as a volunteer counselor over at Crossroads Camp now. He just joined there, Arya says. She said she chased him down with a Super Soaker for sisterly vengeance.” Gendry glanced over at Sansa, grinning big at this.

 

Sansa covered up her mouth with both hands, wanting to cry all over again, but not really because she was upset or anything like that. That was actually very sweet of Arya to try and look out for Sansa, but given the current circumstances, it also made Sansa feel horrible for Sandor. She felt responsible for tonight as well as for the Super Soaker, and that made her guilty for putting Sandor through not just one trial, but two in a row. “Oh my gosh,” Sansa suddenly said, “I’m going to have to talk to her soon. She isn’t planning a full out assault, is she?”

 

Gendry raised his eyebrows at that. “Oh, you know Arya,” he said. “She wouldn’t be Arya if she _didn’t_ plan a full out assault mission.”

 

“Shit,” Sansa swore, looking away.

 

“Wait, since when did _you_ curse?” Gendry asked in disbelief, glancing back momentarily at Sansa again. Sansa sighed deeply and dropped the back of her head against the headrest behind her.

 

“It’s a new habit,” she said, covering up her face and sinking into the seat.

 

“Well, don’t let it take you over,” Gendry replied with a chipper voice. “I like innocent Sansa. Keep her around. It balances Arya out.”

 

“I’ll try,” Sansa told him, shaking her head, “but I can’t make any promises, Gendry.” She cut a sideways glance at him, and he turned his head away from the road long enough to briefly smile at her.

 

“Don’t worry,” Gendry advised her. “Whatever it is, you’ll get through it.”

 

Sansa sighed yet again. _I hope so_ , she thought to herself as she glanced down at her lap. She didn’t say it out loud because a part of her wasn’t sure if she even believed it. Each day, it seemed like things only got worse. Her fingers fidgeted nervously together atop her lap as Gendry drove down the highway.

 

After tonight’s events, Sansa could only pray that Gendry was right.

 

 


	21. Pride Can Stand a Thousand Trials

_* * *_

 

It had been a horrible fucking day. Scratch that, it had been a whole horrible fucking week. Sandor sped home in his vehicle after he got off of work, one hand on the wheel and the other on his chin, his elbow propped up on the edge of his window. He disobeyed various other traffic laws along the way as well, but luckily there were no fucking coppers out tonight to give him shit for it. When he finally arrived at his apartment complex that night, Sandor didn’t even make it to the front door of his apartment before his phone started buzzing inside of his pocket. He immediately frowned as he froze in the hallway, and then he reached into his pocket with annoyance to pull out his phone. Sandor had no idea who would be calling him at this hour, except for maybe Allard, Steffon, or Asha, but it was none of them. Instead, the phone glared up at him with the last possible number he expected to see shining up at him from the bright screen in his hands.

 

Sandor had been trying to call her all week without any luck, and then she showed up at his pub tonight wearing nothing but a fucking bikini and sitting in the backseat of a jeep with two college pricks for company. What the fuck was he supposed to think of that situation? Sandor had completely lost his cool, and he just started swinging. They could have called the police on him. Fuck, he could have gone right back to jail and fucked up everything he had been trying so hard to build back up since he had gotten out the last time. Through hell and high water, he would have landed himself right back where he fucking started all over again—and all because of _her_.

 

Before Sandor even realized it, he had been staring too long at his phone and his hand was shaking. It still hurt from punching that kid in the nose earlier. Sandor looked up at the wall, took a deep breath to calm himself, and swiped his finger over the button to accept the incoming call.

 

“Hello?” Sandor asked, and after the fucking night he just had because of her, he couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice.

 

It was quiet on the other end as if Sansa hadn’t expected such a tone out of him, but the moment of surprise passed her by quickly enough. “Why did you punch my brother?” Sansa asked him, and she used just as much fury in her voice as he had used in his when he first answered her phone call.

 

Sandor couldn’t believe it. “That’s the first fucking thing you ask me?”

 

“Why did you punch him?”

 

“Why have you been ignoring me?” Sandor shot back, ignoring her question in favor of his own.

 

“I wasn’t ready to talk to you,” Sansa told him, and she didn’t hesitate with her answer, so Sandor knew it was the truth. Some small part of him calmed down after that, but it was a very minuscule part.

 

“That’s really mature,” he said.

 

“Oh,” Sansa retorted, “and punching my brother in the face is a model act of maturity? Or is this one of those double-standards where only _I_ get judged for my actions and not you?”

 

 _Goddamn it_ , Sandor thought. This was one of those instances where Sansa proved herself as a lot more intelligent than he sometimes gave her credit for simply because of her age. She ripped him a new one with that comeback. First of all, it was the truth. He hadn’t acted any better than her, and there was nothing he could say to throw that back in her face. Sandor had lost his footing with this argument, and so he exhaled a heavy breath to try and calm himself further before he spoke again.

 

“I didn’t know he was your brother,” Sandor said in a much more composed voice this time.

 

“Who did you think he was?” Sansa asked, pushing forward.

 

This was not an appropriate way to have this conversation, though. Sandor didn’t want to talk about this over a phone. It was too personal, and the phone was too impersonal. They needed to be face to face for this discussion, but it was almost three in the morning, and Sandor didn’t know if driving up to her house at this hour was all that brilliant. Still, he wasn’t having this conversation over the phone. “Look,” Sandor said, “I’m not talking about this with you over the phone. If you want to talk, let’s do it in person—”

 

“I’m home,” Sansa told him immediately, cutting him off, and her quick response and lack of hesitation caught him off guard.

 

“You want to do this now?” Sandor asked her, unable to hide his surprise. He had meant something like tomorrow. At a decent fucking hour.

 

“Yes, _now_ ,” Sansa said with such force that Sandor was admittedly a little afraid to argue with her. He was silent for a moment, and then he shook his head to bring himself back to reality.

 

“I’ll be there in a few,” he told her, and Sandor heard the line _click_ dead as Sansa hung up on him without even saying goodbye. It didn’t bother Sandor, though, not since he was heading over there now to pick her up anyway. Of course, he had to think about where they were going to go this late at night in the first place because he wasn’t about to drive all around town the whole time to talk to Sansa about something this important while they were in his vehicle, and he didn’t want to bring her back to his apartment either. The only place open at this hour was the beach. With a sigh on his lips, Sandor turned around and went back down to his car.

 

Sandor didn’t break any traffic laws this time, and when he pulled up to the end of Winterfell Avenue, he already saw Sansa walking down the street towards him. Her arms were crossed over her chest. She had on pants and a cardigan, and her hair was piled up on her head in a messy bun. As she drew nearer to him, Sandor noticed her gaze was downcast despite her tone with him earlier. He didn’t say anything as Sansa got into his vehicle, and when he pulled off from the edge of the street, Sansa remained silent in the seat beside him. Sandor found himself unnerved by the silence, so he turned on the radio to distract his mind until they reached their destination.

 

The parking lot at the beach was completely empty from one end to the other. There weren’t even any police cars out tonight. Sandor got out of the car, looking over to watch as Sansa exited his car as well. He shut his door, which grabbed her attention, and Sansa finally raised her eyes to him and looked at him—really looked at him, not just a gaze or a glance, but _really_ looked at him—and Sandor wondered how the hell they got here to this spot from a chance meeting over two months ago one night at his pub. One kind deed and a small piece of paper, and his entire life was unraveling at the seams over a redheaded beauty far too young for him.

 

Sansa turned her head away from him, and she began walking towards the beach. Sandor followed her in silence. She hadn’t said anything yet, and neither had he. She led him to one of the raised wooden walkways that separated the parking lot from the beach. Sandor went up the steps, walked across the boards to the other end, and sat down on the topmost step on the other side. Sansa was standing on the very last step with her arms folded over her chest, staring out at the water as the ocean breeze caught in her hair.

 

“You said you didn’t know Theon was my brother, but you wouldn’t tell me over the phone why you punched him,” Sansa suddenly said, interrupting what had now become an almost peaceful silence out here on the beach. She kept her back to him, staring outward, and Sandor cast his gaze away from her back to look out to the dark waves crashing against the edge of the white sands with big piles of foam in their wake.

 

“What do you want me to say?” Sandor asked her, raising his shoulders to shrug them once and realizing he didn’t want to be a liar anymore, regardless of whether it was to himself or someone else. Lying was one of those things that always came back to bite him in the ass, hurting him more than it helped him. Lying to himself was the bigger problem for Sandor, though. Eventually, he always had to come clean. That was part of the healing process, according to Elder Brother. Sandor was never going to learn to be a better person if he didn’t start by being honest. It was the first thing Elder Brother taught him. Fucking honesty. “I thought you were messing around with one of them or involved with one of them,” Sandor admitted, “or both of them. I don’t know.”

 

Sansa was either shaking where she stood because she was really upset with him or she was really cold, but she still didn’t turn around to face him. “ _Both_ of them?”

 

Sandor raised his eyebrows, even though she wasn’t looking at him to see it. “That’s the part you’re going to focus on?” he asked.

 

She finally turned around at that, clutching her arms tightly around her chest. Sansa was fighting for composure with her expression. Sandor could see how she was struggling to keep it smooth, but how the emotion wanted to pour through around the corners and give her away. She opened her mouth and started shaking her head. “I don’t understand,” Sansa said to him. “You _don’t_ want to be involved with me, but you’ll _punch_ someone in the face because you _think_ they’re involved with me?”

 

It was kind of awkward when she put it like that. Sandor rubbed the back of his neck as he made a face. “I never said it was rational,” he tried to explain to her, but even that sounded weak to his ears. Sandor took his hand off his neck and rubbed it over the lower half of his face before pulling it away. “Look,” he told her, and he made eye contact with her as he spoke this time. “I’m going to be honest with you, Sansa. You’re beautiful. You’re really, _really_ beautiful, and you’re funny, you’re intelligent, and you’re witty. You’re fucking _perfect_. You’re the type of girl a man would give up his right leg to be with and not even miss it. Your one flaw isn’t even a flaw. It’s your age.” Sandor paused to shake his head. “Sansa, you’re seventeen.”

 

Sansa was staring at him with her mouth agape. Sandor felt a sudden spike of fear inside of him. Maybe he had been _too_ honest. Was there such a thing? Before he could think further on it, Sansa answered him in a quiet voice.

 

“You act like it’s illegal for us to date,” she said.

 

“It’s not,” Sandor agreed, “but I am capable of having an opinion, you know. _You_ act like it should be normal for me to want to be with a teenager.” Sandor shook his head at this to indicate his feelings on the matter. “It’s not,” he said pointedly, still looking her in the eyes. “Five years ago when I was twenty-eight, you were fucking _twelve_ years old, Sansa.”

 

Sansa’s mouth dropped open further as a look of horror spread over her face, and her arms tightened around her chest. “I’m not twelve _now_!” she snapped at him, angry at him for even bringing that up.

 

“But you get my point,” Sandor added, holding out his hand to point at her.

 

“No, I _don’t_ ,” Sansa shot back, and Sandor found himself pulling his hand back to himself and leaning away from her. “What has that got to do with _anything_? Five years ago? Is this five years ago? No, this is _now_. You’re just trying to come up with excuses to make yourself sound morally superior about something that in six months wouldn’t even bother you, anyway, and you know, that’s _worse_. What, I hit a magic number and suddenly everything is okay? _That’s_ creepy.”

 

Sandor’s eyes went wide. “I didn’t say that—”

 

“But you’re _thinking_ it,” Sansa cut him off, speaking softly. “You’re thinking, ‘If only she was eighteen.’ Admit it, Sandor.”

 

Sandor didn’t want to admit it. His honesty was only going to go so far tonight, and it wasn’t going that far. His silence must have been all the admission she needed, though, because she glanced down at her feet, shuffling one of them gently across the sand.

 

“Are you going to keep punching people I go out somewhere with?” Sansa asked him, still using a quiet voice as she stared down at her feet.

 

Sandor lifted his eyes from the ground, where he had been staring at her shuffling feet as well. “What?”

 

Sansa sighed and lifted her gaze, too. “Are you going to keep punching people I go out somewhere with?” she repeated, looking him in the eyes. There was something in the way she said it that got Sandor’s attention as if she wasn’t saying the whole sentence and just part of it.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“I mean,” Sansa said, and there was a little glint in her eyes beneath the moonlight, shining like tears, “if I go out on the town with my friends and family, and I happen to see you around, are you going to keep punching people you think I’m messing around with?”

 

Sandor suddenly thought of a life without Sansa in it, going back to his usual routine and never seeing her again except from afar on random chance occasions, watching as she laughed and smiled around a bunch of strangers and got on with her life—and he felt an immense, inexplicable fear overtake his heart. He could say out loud whatever argument he wanted to say to Sansa to deter her from getting any closer to him, but it wasn’t going to erase the true fear lingering underneath the surface of just _why_ he was doing this and saying this to her. He had been lying to himself, and he didn’t even realize it. Sometimes, Sandor thought, he was so good at lying to himself that even he forgot the truth from time to time.

 

Silently, he tried to reason with himself regarding her age. While a small part of it bothered him, it didn’t bother him as much as it possibly should have bothered him. Sure, Sansa was young, but she wasn’t so young that it was illegal for her to consent to have sex if she wanted to—and acknowledging that fact didn’t mean Sandor wanted her in that way just yet either. Sandor had some inappropriate thoughts from time to time regarding Sansa, and he caught himself staring at her a lot more often than he cared to admit, but he never thought about sex when it came to her. With that in mind, Sandor really wasn’t afraid of that happening between them. His fear was on a completely different level than anything he was bringing up with her in their argument so far.

 

 _What bothered you is what she offered to you_ , Elder Brother’s voice echoed through his head. _Friendship_. _Companionship_. _Connection_. _Trust_. _These are the things that bother you, Sandor . . . not sex, not a pretty face, but your inability to allow people to get close to you_. A kiss was just a kiss. It wouldn’t have necessarily led to something more, but Sandor kept falling back on her age as an excuse to push her away when the real truth of the matter was he was scared to fucking death of Sansa getting too close to him. If he hadn’t been lying to himself about that since the very beginning, Sandor might have been able to stop her from getting as close as she had gotten to him by now—but by now, it was too late, and she was already under his skin.

 

“You don’t want to be friends anymore?” Sandor suddenly asked her, breaking through the silence that hung in the air between them and praying his voice didn’t sound as desperate to her as it sounded to him. He couldn’t even remember now what they were talking about last or if his question was even related to it, but it was the first thing that came out of his mouth after everything he had been thinking.

 

Sansa’s mouth fell open again, and she started shaking her head. She walked closer to him, each step she ascended making her taller. “No, I just thought . . . with the way you were talking that . . . you didn’t want to see me anymore . . . ” She reached the empty step right before Sandor’s feet, and then she reached out and took his left hand between both of hers. Sandor felt a shock of alarm pass through him, and he leaned back and made a motion to pull his hand away, but Sansa gently folded her fingers down between his and he stilled completely. He was frozen in place with fear.

 

Suddenly, Sandor wanted to go back on his question of friendship. In fact, he backtracked and ran right the fuck over it.

 

“Sansa, I can’t pretend I’m not really attracted to you,” Sandor admitted, feeling his heart rate shoot through the roof with each word out of his mouth. “But we can’t just keep seeing each other as friends and expect nothing to happen—”

 

“Maybe I want something to happen,” Sansa said softly, raising her eyes to meet his gaze. Sandor was silent at first, taking a deep breath.

 

“You don’t,” he said, slowly shaking his head. “Trust me, Sansa, you don’t.”

 

Sansa narrowed her gaze, tilting her head to the side. “You know what I want now?” she asked him. “You can read my mind?”

 

“You don’t want _this_ ,” Sandor said, gesturing between the two of them with his free hand. “You’re young, and you have your whole life ahead of you—”

 

“And being with you is going to change that?” Sansa asked calmly, cutting him off.

 

Sandor was a nervous wreck. He was shaking, and he knew she felt it because she was still holding onto his left hand. How did they go from talking about how this was inappropriate to slightly entertaining the idea within the span of a few minutes? Elder Brother was going to kill him if Sandor didn’t end up killing himself first. This was supposed to be a conversation to sort everything out and put it to the side, not to make matters worse by digging an even deeper hole. Sandor glanced away from Sansa’s gaze as he breathed in deeply and ran his free hand over his face in an attempt to calm his nerves to the best of his ability.

 

The only way he was going to get through to Sansa was to be honest with her.

 

He had to tell her the truth.

 

“Sansa, I’m no white knight,” Sandor told her slowly, raising his eyes to hers once more, his voice low and quiet. “We’re not going to ride off together into the sunset on the back of a horse. I have problems. I have big fucking issues. I am an alcoholic. A recovering alcoholic, but still an alcoholic. I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, things you have no idea of, and I’ve served time for a lot of those things. I am a fucked up person still trying to figure out right from wrong.” Sandor slowly shook his head at her. “I am not Prince Charming,” he added, his voice barely a whisper.

 

“What time period do you think I’m from, Sandor?” Sansa suddenly asked him, looking at him with disbelief in her blue eyes as her brow creased in confusion. “Do you really think I believe in fairytales? There is no such thing as Prince Charming. He doesn’t exist. If I know anything at all, I know that. But you’re forgetting something, too,” she added in a whisper, her eyes watering up and catching the glint of the moonlight, and Sandor felt her hand grip onto his tighter. “I’m not a princess,” Sansa told him, shaking her head as a single tear escaped and rolled down her cheek. “I’m not locked up in some tower, waiting to be rescued by a gallant knight. I’m just a young woman with feelings for a man, wanting to give it a shot, even if it’s in the dark. Can’t we . . . can’t we try?”

 

Sandor was damned the moment he let his hand touch the side of her cheek, his thumb gently brushing away the fallen tear. He was damned the moment he closed his eyes and put his hand behind her head, pulling Sansa towards him. Sansa knelt on the steps beside him, releasing his hand to put both of her arms around his middle for a hug, and she laid her head against his chest. Sandor’s arm went around her shoulders, enveloping Sansa in his embrace. This was not how this night was supposed to go, but Sandor was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t already made this decision a long time ago and just couldn’t face up to it until now.

 

“Is that a yes?” Sansa asked quietly from his chest, her voice muffled against his shirt. Sandor was silent above her for a moment, his hand passing slowly up and down on her shoulder, trying to think of all the consequences of saying yes out loud. Each one had started to lose its glare with her in his arms, though, and Sandor eventually got tired of thinking about them altogether.

 

He closed his eyes again, leaning his face into her hair. Sansa’s hair smelled like some mixture between fruit and flowers. Her messy bun tickled his face, though, and Sandor reached up to pull the band out of her hair to let it fall down. Sansa tensed up in his arms at this, and Sandor froze briefly, wondering what she was thinking to grow so tense. He let her hair band slide onto his wrist, and Sansa relaxed again when she felt his hand go through her hair, his fingers threading through it and brushing it to the side.

 

“Is that a yes?” Sansa repeated in a whisper, and he felt it as she brought one of her hands from around his middle to his chest, her fingers curling against his shirt. She shivered each time the tips of his fingers passed through her hair and lightly glided along her scalp. Somewhere in his mind, Sandor thought he ought to answer her. Was it a yes? Sandor wasn’t sure, but he didn’t want to take her home just yet and he didn’t want to drop her off and never see her again either.

 

“Do you want it to be a yes?” Sandor asked her, and Sansa pulled away from him, her head rising from his chest. There was a hurt look on her face as she regarded him, and Sansa shook her head at him.

 

“Don’t play with me,” she said. “Yes or no. You have to choose.”

 

Sandor stared at her. Finally, he reached out for the side of her face and glided his thumb once more over her cheek. Without thinking about what he was doing, he pulled Sansa towards him and kissed her. It was a chaste kiss of nothing more than lips to lips, but Sansa trembled against him and Sandor felt another tear escape her eye and hit his cheek. Sansa suddenly wrapped her arms around his neck, and she broke the kiss by pulling away to bury her face into the collar of his shirt. She was clutching onto him like he just rescued her from drowning, which was more than just a little bit unnerving but also in a strange way kind of comforting. Sandor wrapped his arms around her, too, and hugged her back.

 

“Yes,” he simply said.

 

 


	22. Let’s Join Forces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** At the end of this chapter, I’ve included a list of songs so far whose lyrics inspired the chapter names. I thought it would be a fun little inclusion!

_* * *_

 

Before Sandor got back from the store, Sansa didn’t have a whole lot of time to execute her plan for the evening. In fact, there was only one chair in Sandor’s apartment, so she was really going to have to improvise in regards to that. She scooted the couch closer to the television, and then she positioned the one chair right where she needed it. Sansa grabbed the stools from underneath the kitchen counter because Sandor didn’t have a dining table in his apartment, but a bar area instead, and she set those up where she needed them as well. Once she was done with that, she had no idea where he kept laundry, so she pulled the sheets and blanket off of his bed and just went ahead and used those. She ran back afterwards almost as an afterthought and grabbed his pillows, too.

 

Everything had been going great this past week, and she probably only spent one or two days at home, but her parents didn’t seem to mind her daily excursions—as long as they continued to not know where she was going, of course. Sansa always found some friend’s house to name, and as long as she was back by a decent hour, nothing bad ever happened when she got home. Sansa had felt the deepest sensation of regret the moment she had seen Sandor’s apartment again after their week of not talking and realized that Sandor had never picked up to finish the painting from where they had left off after their argument. She had spent the earlier half of the week helping him to finish it, so now the living room was a deep forest green, and it looked so cozy and vibrant with the new color. The old grey walls had been so normal and kind of drab, but this was different, and Sansa liked it.

 

She searched around his kitchen for some snacks, found a few popcorn bags still in a box up in one of the cabinets, and prepared one of those. She dumped the popcorn in a big bowl, melted some butter and poured it on top, sprinkled some salt, and brought that to her setup inside of the living room. It wasn’t too long after that when she heard Sandor’s keys at the door, and he unlocked it before she could reach the door to open it for him, but once he saw what she had done in the living room, he suddenly froze in the doorway and a look of utter shock spread across his features.

 

Sandor was still holding two bags in his hands, and Sansa tried to reach for one of them to help out, and that was when he looked down at her, narrowing his eyes and furrowing his brow in an expression of disbelief. “What have you done to my living room?” Sandor asked her, and Sansa bit down on her lip. Crap, he didn’t like it. She was nervous all of a sudden, and she only had time to open her mouth before Sandor put down the bags right there at the door and crossed his apartment, heading for the hallway to his bedroom. Sansa’s eyes went wide. Oh, no, he was going to see where the sheets came from and he was going to be pissed, wasn’t he?

 

Sandor hadn’t even bothered to close the front door, so Sansa took care of that and picked up the bags he had put down by the door. As she started to carry them to the kitchen, she heard Sandor exclaim from within his bedroom, “What the hell!”

 

Sansa froze in her steps long enough to cringe, sighing deeply at herself. This was not going to plan so far, and she mentally cursed herself for her decision. Maybe she should have asked him first before doing it, but Sansa hadn’t thought that Sandor would have this bad of a reaction to it. It was just some playful fun, but now it was probably going to ruin the whole evening. Sansa placed the grocery bags down on the kitchen counter and turned around to lean against it, crossing her arms and waiting on him to come out of his bedroom. When he did, he was pointing down the hallway towards his bedroom.

 

“Why did you take the sheets off my bed?” Sandor asked her, using that incredulous tone he used so well, and Sansa sighed and glanced over at her creation in the living room. Well, she had thought it looked great. It wasn’t her fault Sandor didn’t like it.

 

“I was just borrowing them,” Sansa said, looking back at him. “I was going to put them back when we were done, but I can put them back now if you don’t like it. I just thought what with the movie night we could enjoy it with a little fort in the living room. We still do it from time to time at my house, and I thought it would be fun.” Sansa’s voice had fallen towards the end, though, and she cast her gaze downward. “I didn’t know you wouldn’t like it.”

 

Sandor was quiet, so Sansa dared to look up and see his reaction. He was staring in the living room at the fort she had built out of his couch, chair, stools, and sheets, but he didn’t look all that upset anymore. After a moment of silence, she saw Sandor sigh. His shoulders seemed to drop with the action. He walked into the living room, and Sansa slowly dared to follow after him. Sandor approached the homemade tent, staring at it, and turned around to face Sansa. He gestured towards the tent with both arms.

 

“What’s the purpose of this?” Sandor asked, like he had never seen a homemade sheet fort before. Sansa raised her eyebrows at Sandor, her arms still crossed over her chest, and glanced between him and the fort before settling her eyes on Sandor at last.

 

“You sit in it, or lay in it, while you watch the movie,” Sansa told him, “or you can do other things in it, too, not just watch movies, obviously.” Sandor’s eyes slowly went wide at that, and Sansa knew immediately what had just crossed his mind. Sansa couldn’t help it. She gasped at him, shooting a look of horror towards Sandor. “Oh my god, seriously?” she asked, though it was completely a rhetorical question. “You have, like, the dirtiest mind ever.”

 

Sandor glared in her direction, shaking his finger at her. “You don’t know _what_ I was thinking,” he shot back.

 

“It was written all over your face,” Sansa said, giving him a pointed look over her crossed arms, and Sandor shook his head at her and looked away. “Come on, it’ll be fun,” Sansa suddenly added, and she had a bounce in her step as she walked over to Sandor’s side. “Channel your inner child, and just enjoy it. I have it all set up where it’s closed off with the television. I even have some popcorn ready as a snack.”

 

Sandor was staring at the tent. “I don’t have an inner child,” he told her.

 

“Of course, you do,” Sansa said, shaking her head at him. “Everyone does. It’s probably hidden in there somewhere really deep, buried under years of pent up aggression and manliness.”

 

Sandor turned to look at her, lifting his eyebrows at her. “Really?”

 

Sansa grinned brightly. “Really,” she said.

 

“I was joking.”

 

“I’m not,” Sansa told him, linking her arm around his and leading him towards the fort’s entrance. “Come on, please? It’ll be fun, I promise. I’ll even let you pick the movie.” Sandor sighed once more, staring at the fort, and then he looked at her. He seemed to be debating it for a moment, but all of the hot air went out of him at last as he shrugged his shoulders.

 

“All right,” Sandor conceded in the end, and Sansa did a little internal dance of joy. She was grinning like crazy and biting down on her lip to try and hide it. She didn’t want Sandor to see it and change his mind, after all. He picked out the movie like she suggested, settling on a horror flick, and Sansa thought maybe he picked one of those on purpose. Sandor knew she was jumpy, and horror movies made her squeal and jolt all over the place. He definitely did that on purpose.

 

Sansa cut the lights out in the living room, and with the curtains closed and the lights out, it was really dark except for the glow of the television screen. Sansa joined Sandor in the fort, where she had made comfortable bedding on the inside. She had laid out his thick comforter on the floor and placed his two pillows close to the end nearest to the television. Right on the floor at the edge of the pillows was the bowl of popcorn. The movie went underway, and Sansa was actually watching it at first, but her mind kept wandering.

 

First of all, they were both lying on their stomachs side by side with their arms propped on the pillows, but Sandor had left some distance between them. It caught Sansa’s attention, even though she was sure it was nothing. It shouldn’t worry her, but it did worry her, and she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Once she started to think about that, Sansa started to think about how Sandor hadn’t kissed her again ever since that night on the beach. Their first kiss had been the one they had the fight over, and then their second one had been the one on the beach, but there hadn’t been a third or a fourth or a fifth. Something was wrong with that picture, Sansa thought. A whole week and no kissing. It really kind of bothered her if she was honest with herself about it. After all, they were in a relationship now, weren’t they? And didn’t couples kiss? It was supposed to be normal, but Sandor hadn’t made a single move to kiss her again since that night on the beach.

 

Sansa had tried a few times to get close enough to him for it, but honestly, there was never really a good opportunity for her to try it. She also didn’t want to lean in while he was turning away and completely mess it up, making an awkward situation out of it. Besides, he was a lot taller than her, even if she was really tall, and getting the right angle was hard enough as it was. Sansa let out a soft little sigh with her chin propped up in her hands as she watched the movie on the screen ahead of her, though she wasn’t really paying all that much attention to it. Why was she so wound up over this whole kissing thing, anyway? Certainly couples didn’t have to kiss all the time, did they?

 

Sansa wanted to drop her head against the pillow because of her thoughts, but she didn’t want Sandor asking her what was wrong, so she bit her lip and pushed back the urge to bury her face into the pillow. Instead, she glanced over at Sandor, who barely even seemed to register her beside him, and an idea popped into her head. She should kiss _him_. Besides, it was dark, and there was a movie playing in the background, and they were alone. It was like every movie she had ever seen. It was perfect timing. She just had to get a little closer to him.

 

Very carefully and slowly, Sansa scooted a little closer to Sandor. When he didn’t seem to notice the distance closing between them, Sansa scooted even a little bit closer than before until their proximity was almost touching. Still, he didn’t look down at her. Her palms were developing this nervous, sweaty sensation, and for some reason, her shoulders seemed to tingle all of a sudden. She was nervous, but she was kind of excited, too. Sansa just hoped this all went according to plan in her head because if she messed this up, then he was never going to let her live it down. She could just picture Sandor making fun of her for it—but then she imagined shutting him up with a real kiss, and that killed the negativity in her mind that almost made her backpedal on her decision to kiss him altogether.

 

The problem was Sandor wasn’t looking at her, and Sansa didn’t want to have to turn his face towards her. Suddenly, she thought about their night at Maegor’s Holdfast and how she had thought about kissing his ear when he had been leaning near her. She could reach his ear without a problem given how his head was turned forward, and maybe he would really like that, anyway. Sansa had been kissed on the ear before, and sometimes it was twenty times better than being kissed on the mouth. It sent all sorts of pleasure shocks through her, and most people she knew liked ear kissing too, so maybe Sandor would like it as well.

 

Sansa swallowed past a lump in her throat and propped herself up, watching Sandor closely, but he wasn’t paying any attention to her at all. Sansa leaned in close to his ear and closed her eyes, playfully nipping at the bottom of his earlobe.

 

Sandor jerked away from her, startled and not looking in the least like he had enjoyed it. He stared at Sansa like she had just come out of nowhere, and Sansa couldn’t help it, it hurt. She felt tears sting at the back of her eyes at Sandor’s reaction, and she tried to hold back the urge to let them fall. Not over something as small as this, Sansa told herself, but then Sandor’s expression softened and his shoulders lost their tension. Sansa looked away. He must have known exactly what he had done to upset her because instead of questioning her about it, Sandor reached out and took her by the chin to gently urge her to look at him again.

 

“Hey,” he murmured, “I’m sorry. You startled me, is all.”

 

“I was just trying to kiss you,” Sansa said, figuring honesty was the best policy after all, and there was no point in hiding what was obvious anyway.

 

“I know,” Sandor said, and there was note of amusement in his voice that made Sansa look up at him. He had gotten her head turned in his direction, but until that moment her gaze had been downcast. Somewhere in the back of her mind, it took Sansa a moment to realize his hand was on the side of her face and his thumb was stroking back and forth across her cheek. He didn’t lean in to kiss her, but there was a look in his eyes that made Sansa’s heart skip a beat. It was almost like he was waiting on her to make a move first, and when Sansa recognized this, she felt her heart pounding even harder inside of her chest.

 

She crept a little bit closer to him again, and Sandor slowly leaned down to her level. Tilting her head back just enough, Sansa leaned forward and pressed her lips to his with his hand still on the side of her face. She wanted to kiss him like the first time, and so she parted her lips against his mouth to indicate where she wanted to take things, but Sandor seemed to hesitate at that. He was motionless at first, and he kept his mouth closed despite her bold move. In her nervousness at that moment, Sansa tried tentatively touching his lips with her tongue, giving them a little lick.

 

Sandor caved at that. His lips parted against hers like warm water, and Sansa deepened the kiss. Her tongue swirled against his, and he groaned softly at that, but maybe he wouldn’t run away in fear this time. Sansa hoped he wouldn’t do such a thing tonight. She wanted a good kissing session with him without Sandor losing his cool over it. She drew herself closer to him by lightly pushing herself against him, and she lifted her hand to put it on his neck. Sansa delved her tongue in his mouth again, moaning softly in response to all of the sensations it invoked, which were nice, and suddenly realized she wanted to be a whole lot closer than just this. Her whole body was tingling with pleasant little shocks.

 

The passion behind the kiss increased pretty quickly. Before Sansa knew it, Sandor was taking the lead and turning his head to the opposite side, kissing her deeply at another angle—and she felt his hand on the back of her head, his fingers splayed out and holding her, as his tongue caught against hers again. Sansa moaned aloud against his mouth, her toes curling up tightly, and her chest felt constricted and a little painful to breathe, but she would live. If she stopped kissing him, she wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t die from that. Kissing was _amazing_ , and Sansa didn’t want it to stop.

 

She used a few of the tricks she had learned from her years of kissing experience, but not all of them. She had to keep some of them for later, of course, but Sandor clearly liked everything she did if the deep, pleasurable sounds coming from his throat were anything to go by. Sansa felt each moan, each groan, reverberate low against the hand she held upon his neck. Soon enough, she brought both hands to his neck to hold him, and Sandor was shifting towards her, and Sansa found herself at a much different angle than before.

 

He had her on the ground against the blanket now, her head lying upon one of the pillows, and his head and upper chest were hovering over her, but the rest of his body was off to the side and out of the way. Sansa wouldn’t mind having all of him on top of her, but she figured he did that more for his sake than hers anyway, and she wasn’t going to question it. The kissing didn’t cease, and his lips captured hers in one movement and then another, slow and then fast, soft and then hard, and Sansa returned them all with just as much fervor. Each time they used tongue, Sansa felt him shiver above her somewhere in his shoulders, too, and she liked that.

 

Sansa pulled at him, though, trying to get him on top of her. Sandor seemed to ignore her at first, focusing on her from where he was now, but Sansa wasn’t satisfied with that anymore. There was something tickling her at the back of her mind, something dangerous and intoxicating about the idea of him on top of her while he kissed her—like they had done on the bed. Sansa wanted to do that again, so she tugged at his shoulders once more, urging him on top of her, and with the direction of their heated kissing, Sandor didn’t seem to mind this time. He shifted his weight above her, but he didn’t want to straddle her—Sansa found he somehow positioned himself between her legs, which confused her at first because she didn’t remember parting them—or did she? Sandor’s warm tongue slid against hers, though, and Sansa found she didn’t particularly care anymore about anything other than that sensation.

 

Sandor didn’t touch anything but her neck and her face, and Sansa registered somewhere in the back of her mind that his other forearm was propped up against the floor to help with his weight. She suddenly felt his fingers in her hair, and then they were gliding along her scalp, and Sansa moaned softly at that. Her whole entire body _shivered_ with the contact on her scalp, and she didn’t know what possessed her or when exactly she did it, but Sansa had curled her legs around Sandor’s body—and that was when she felt _it_.

 

He was hard. Sansa knew what that was without having to ask. It wasn’t like she hadn’t felt one through a boyfriend’s jeans before tonight, but somehow this was different. It was a little terrifying—probably because he was a man and not a boy—and while some dark corner of Sansa’s mind wanted to entertain the fact that he was having this reaction because of her, the bigger part of her mind wanted to pull away and put some distance between them before he got the wrong impression of her actions. Sansa settled with the latter, unwrapping her legs from around Sandor’s hips, and then she turned away from his mouth to break the kiss.

 

Sandor didn’t freeze above her, nor did he get upset or angry, and she felt his hand still playing with her hair off to the side of her head. “Is everything okay?” he asked her, and Sansa turned her head to look up at Sandor and was surprised at the look she saw there in his eyes. There was nothing but concern. A little bit of a gleam of desire, of course, given what they had been doing, but mostly there was concern.

 

Sansa found herself smiling gently up at him. “Yeah,” she whispered back, “everything is okay. I just didn’t want to give you the wrong impression or go too far.”

 

Sandor shook his head as if to say he hadn’t gotten that impression from her at all. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” he told her in a low and soft voice, and the look of concern was still there as he raised his hand to her cheek. “If you ever feel uncomfortable, just tell me and we’ll stop.” Sandor shook his head again. “I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable, Sansa, and I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”

 

Sansa felt her heart hurting in her chest. After having a boyfriend like Joffrey, who had been so violent with her and never cared if he scared her or not, Sansa never expected to hear something like that. She felt tears stinging in her eyes, and she turned her head away because she didn’t want Sandor to see them. “Can we just cuddle?” she asked, wiping at her eyes with her thumb.

 

“Sure,” Sandor said, and she turned her back to him and scooted closer as he wrapped one of his arms around her waist and pulled her towards him. Sandor kept a little bit of distance between them with their lower bodies, but his chest was pressed up against her back, and Sansa could feel each slow breath in and out of his lungs. It was sort of invariably comforting, and she closed her eyes and rested her arm over his arm where it lay over her middle. She found his hand and threaded her fingers through his, linking them together. Unlike his reaction on the beach a week ago, Sandor didn’t seem to mind this time when she held his hand.

 

Sansa was beginning to think this was progress. Sandor was enjoying his time with her, but he wasn’t demanding of anything or expecting rewards. Every time she felt uncomfortable about the slightest thing, he always managed to assuage her fears somehow. Somewhere beyond the noise in her mind, Sansa registered the background noise of the movie still playing on the television screen, but her eyes were closed and she was feeling increasingly sleepy like she was ready for a nap. She felt Sandor’s face against her hair, which meant he wasn’t watching the movie either, and she felt his free hand near their heads brush over her hair.

 

Sandor leaned forward and kissed the back of her head, and Sansa’s breath hitched in her chest.

 

She curled closer into his embrace, feeling an immense feeling of safety in Sandor’s arms, and soon enough, she drifted off into a light, peaceful sleep.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Diet Mountain Dew – “Diet Mountain Dew” by Lana Del Rey  
> 2\. Take Jesus Off the Dashboard – “Diet Mountain Dew” by Lana Del Rey  
> 3\. The Kindness of Strangers – “Carmen” by Lana Del Rey  
> 4\. Waiting on the Other Side – “Dark Paradise” by Lana Del Rey  
> 5\. No More Skipping Rope – “Lolita” by Lana Del Rey  
> 6\. Maybe There’s a Shark in the Water – “Shark in the Water” by VV Brown  
> 7\. You’re Hell on Wheels – “Disease” by Matchbox Twenty  
> 8\. A Rate That is Truly Alarming – “Can’t Stop” by Maroon 5  
> 9\. All This Dog-eared Innocence – “The Graveyard Near the House” by The Airborne Toxic Event  
> 10\. Five Four Three Two One – “No Curtain Call” by Maroon 5  
> 11\. That Girl is So Dangerous – “Dangerous” by Akon feat. Kardinal Offishall  
> 12\. Make Them Good Girls Go Bad – “Good Girls Go Bad” by Cobra Starship  
> 13\. Here Come the Men in Black – “Men in Black” by Forever the Sickest Kids (or Will Smith)  
> 14\. The Vacancy That Sat in My Heart – “Mirrors” by Justin Timberlake  
> 15\. Act Nice Like a Lady – “Lucky Ones” by Lana Del Rey  
> 16\. Go Get Your Shovel and We’ll Dig a Deep Hole – “Brick by Boring Brick” by Paramore  
> 17\. You’re a Careless Con and a Crazy Liar – “Lucky Ones” by Lana Del Rey  
> 18\. If It Makes Your Life Unbearable – “Change” by Tracy Chapman  
> 19\. We Need to Talk About It – “Letting the Cables Sleep” by Bush  
> 20\. Breaking Each Other’s Hearts – “Heart Attack” by Trey Songz  
> 21\. Pride Can Stand a Thousand Trials – “Kissing You” by Des’ree  
> 22\. Let’s Join Forces – “Guns and Horses” by Ellie Goulding


	23. Shedding Light and Righting Wrongs

_* * *_

 

It was early in the morning. Brienne had woken up alone in the bed, but since it was Jaime’s day off, she figured he was up early to take care of something on his schedule. She took a quick shower to wake herself up, dried her hair, and pulled on her uniform. While she was sitting on the bed and lacing her shoes, she heard a _thump_ come from somewhere under the house below the floorboards. Brienne paused, holding her laces straight outwards, and stared at the floor as if she expected something to burst through it at any moment, but nothing happened and silence followed that first noise. Shrugging her shoulders, Brienne dismissed it and resumed lacing her shoes.

 

She put on her duty belt, fixed everything in place, and headed to the kitchen to grab a bagel. Brienne dropped it into the toaster and grabbed some cream cheese from the refrigerator when she heard yet another _thump_ resonate out from under the floorboards of the house. Brienne froze once more, and this time she stared at the floor with wide eyes, and now she was wondering what the hell was going on down there. When her bagel was finished toasting, she put some cream cheese on in and took a bite as she walked towards the front door. It was time to inspect the skirting of the crawlspace real quick before she went to work.

 

After all, Brienne wasn’t the type of woman to have to call on Jaime to do things like this for her.

 

As she was eating her bagel, she stepped outside and walked off the porch and turned right to head towards the driveway. Jaime’s vehicle was still here, so Brienne glanced over at the house crawlspace. One of the entrances to it was wide open, and there was a big power cord leading out of it. Brienne raised her eyebrows and walked over to the crawlspace opening. She took another bite of her bagel, calmly ate it, and then called out into opening.

 

“Jaime, is that you?”

 

She heard some scrambling from within the crawlspace, the sound of something heavy dragging along the ground, and waited patiently for Jaime to appear at the opening of the crawlspace. He peeped up at her into the sunshine, squinting, and wearing safety goggles on his face. Jaime was completely covered in dirt, but Brienne actually thought that was kind of sexy. Jaime looked great covered in dirt for some reason she couldn’t explain.

 

Jaime suddenly smiled really brightly at her. “Hey,” he said.

 

Brienne took another bite of her bagel, chewed slowly, and lifted her eyebrows at him. “What are you doing down there, Jaime?” she asked him.

 

“I’m killing termites,” he offered in a chipper voice, and he pulled out the pesticide gun he was using underneath the house to show it to her. “It turns out we have a nasty little infestation down here. I’m weeding them out.”

 

Brienne couldn’t help the smile that threatened to overtake her face. “And you couldn’t call a professional for this?”

 

Jaime scowled at that. “Do you know how much professionals cost? Besides, it’s not that hard. You just buy the right stuff, and then you spray them. Easy. These suckers won’t know what hit them when I’m done with them.”

 

“You know, we’re not broke or anything,” Brienne told him pointedly. “We can afford a professional.”

 

“My _father_ can afford a professional,” Jaime shot back, sounding bitter like he always did when he talked about his father, “but I’m not calling my father to pay for a pesticide control problem. He can keep his shiny money and shove it up his ass.”

 

“I’m sure he’d love to hear that from you.”

 

Jaime shot her a warning look. “Don’t you dare repeat what I said to him,” he said.

 

Brienne rolled her eyes. “Oh, like I talk to your father, anyway.”

 

“Good,” Jaime said, grinning brightly. “Let’s _keep_ it that way, and all of us just avoid him when we can.”

 

“All of us?” Brienne asked, wondering if he meant more than just her and him.

 

“Well, Tyrion too,” Jaime told her. “You know he hates Father as well.”

 

“What _is_ up with Tyrion, by the way?” Brienne asked suddenly, thinking about Jaime’s brother. “We haven’t seen him in a while. Have you heard from him lately?”

 

Jaime sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “Not lately, no,” he admitted, “but you know Tyrion. He’s an alcoholic. Sometimes I wonder how he manages his job in his condition, but he’s _rolling_ in the money, too, so he must be doing something right.” Jaime shook his head at that, cutting his eyes to Brienne. “Why is it everyone but me in my family is doing something extraordinary?”

 

Brienne felt her heart break inside of her chest at Jaime’s seemingly innocent question, and she bent over to wrap her arm over Jaime’s shoulders and hug him to her chest. He was always comparing himself to his family and thinking he had nothing under his belt like the rest of them had, but he was amazing at his job and he had a wonderful life at home—wasn’t that all that mattered? Jaime must have put down the pesticide gun because she felt Jaime’s arms go around her, too.

 

“You’re too harsh on yourself, Jaime,” Brienne told him softly, and she wasn’t about to kiss the top of his head not knowing where it had been under the house, so she had to refrain from the urge. “You’re an amazing man, and you don’t give yourself enough credit for it. You’re the best officer there is, and everyone envies you. Of course, the criminals hate you, but that’s a given.” She felt Jaime’s chest shake a little bit at this in silent laughter. “But all that matters in life is not money or power or position . . . it’s love. As long as you love what you do and you love me, then we’ve got it made.”

 

“Stop it,” Jaime said against her chest, his voice muffled. “You’ll make me cry like a baby.”

 

“Oh, will I?” Brienne asked, teasing him.

 

Jaime pulled away from her to smile at her. “No, but it was wonderful advice all the same.” He leaned forward and kissed her on the lips, lingering a little longer than for just a peck. When he pulled away, he was still smiling. “Now, get to work before you’re late.”

 

“Actually, I’m early,” Brienne said, and she stood up from the ground. “I’m going to talk to Sansa today if I can catch her home. I’ve been trying for the past week to find her, but each time I’ve tried she’s never been home.”

 

Jaime picked up the pesticide gun, waving it around haphazardly. “She’s up to something,” he said, and then he slid back under the crawlspace.

 

Brienne narrowed her eyes. “What makes you say that?”

 

Jaime peeked his head back out at her. “Because my Spidey senses are tingling,” he joked, grinning all of a sudden.

 

“Seriously, Jaime?” Brienne asked, placing her hands on her hips above her duty belt. “You have Spidey senses now? Are you some kind of superhero and you’ve never told me? Is that supposed to explain your impeccable arrest record?”

 

“Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can,” Jaime started singing as he disappeared under the house again, his voice echoing out to Brienne. “Spins a web any size! Catches thieves just like flies! Look out! Here comes the Spiderman . . . ”

 

Brienne shook her head, but she was trying not to laugh out loud. “I’m leaving now, Jaime!” she called out.

 

“Have a good day!” Jaime called back out from under the house. “I love you!”

 

“I love you, too!” Brienne called out as she walked towards her car. Once she was inside, she finally allowed herself to laugh out loud, shaking her head at herself and Jaime. She was glad he was in better spirits lately. Jaime’s previous downward spiral from weeks ago turned into an upward spiral in recent times, and Brienne was thankful for it. She had tried her best to alleviate his fears because at least from what she had seen Sansa was all right, but she had said she was still going to talk to her for Jaime’s sake. For that, he was grateful. Brienne could tell he worried about the girl, and he worried about her a lot.

 

The drive over to Sansa’s house didn’t take that long. The Starks lived over on Winterfell Avenue, and Brienne and Jaime lived on Evenfall Circle, which was probably about a ten to fifteen minute drive depending on the traffic. Brienne pulled into their driveway, noticing Catelyn and Eddard were home, and got out of her vehicle. She didn’t want to alarm Sansa’s parents, so she had been saying the reason she wanted to speak to Sansa had to do with Arya and the camp, which they easily accepted without question.

 

Brienne walked up to their front door and knocked with three raps of her knuckles. To her surprise, the door was opened this time by the one person she was actually looking for—Sansa Stark. The girl saw Brienne, and her eyes went wide. Sansa then smiled in an almost genuine way for Brienne, but Brienne could tell the girl was partially afraid underneath the surface as well. “Hi, Officer Brienne,” Sansa greeted her. “It’s nice to see you.”

 

Brienne smiled back. “It’s nice to see you, too, Sansa,” Brienne said. “Would you like to join me for a little walk? I’d like to have a moment to talk with you, if that’s okay. It’s nothing bad, I promise you.” Brienne made sure her expression was soft so as to not ward Sansa away from her.

 

Sansa looked hesitant, though. The girl glanced back into her house over her shoulder as if she was looking for someone to help her get out of this situation, but when no one was standing there, she turned her head back to Brienne. “Okay,” Sansa said softly. “We can talk.”

 

Sansa walked out of the house and closed the door, joining Brienne by her side. The two of them just headed down the sidewalk slowly, and Brienne thought of how to begin what she had to say. The thing was she didn’t think she was going to have to deal with anything real, so she wasn’t as guarded with her tongue as she possibility should have been. “Your Uncle Jaime has been worried about you,” Brienne started with a slow voice, and she glanced over to gauge Sansa’s reaction.

 

Sansa didn’t seem to have much of one. “He’s been a lot like that lately, I’ve noticed,” Sansa said.

 

“This is going to seem like it’s coming out of the blue maybe, but Sansa,” Brienne said, and here she stopped walking, turning to face the younger girl. Sansa stopped walking as well, and Brienne saw the younger girl swallow past a lump in her throat with her nervousness. “I want to make sure no one has tried to hurt you or take advantage of you physically,” Brienne told her carefully. “You know it is _not_ your fault if someone has, and I want to be there for you to help you if anything has happened to you.”

 

Sansa looked at Brienne like she was confused, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “What do you mean? Why would someone have hurt me or taken advantage of me physically?” she asked, seemingly genuinely perplexed by the suggestion.

 

Brienne decided to be frank with Sansa. “Jaime said he picked you up a few blocks from Sandor Clegane’s apartment, and you were holding a torn dress in your hands and you had nothing on your body but a too large messed up shirt and you couldn’t stop crying.”

 

Sansa’s eyes grew huge all of a sudden, and her mouth fell open in shock. “Oh my god,” she said, and then she brought her hands to her face. She wasn’t looking at Brienne anymore. “Oh my god, oh my _god_!” Sansa shook her head quickly and held out her hands near her face. “No, no, no,” she said really fast, and she met Brienne’s eyes again. “No, that’s _not_ what happened,” Sansa said firmly, and she fanned herself for a moment like she was unbelievably nervous, but she definitely wasn’t afraid of anything from what Brienne could see. Sansa looked like she was going to say something, but then she put her fingers over her mouth.

 

“You can tell me anything, you know,” Brienne gently urged her. “I’m not going to judge you for it, whatever happened. The truth obviously sounds like it will be a _lot_ better than what caused the worry.”

 

Sansa took a deep breath and exhaled it, clearing her throat. “Okay, look,” Sansa said, glancing up at Brienne’s face. She bit onto her bottom lip for a moment before allowing herself to speak further. “We were hanging out as just friends. Just friends, nothing more. I suggested we paint his apartment, so we got everything we needed to paint his apartment, and I had to take off my dress and put on an oversized shirt because I didn’t want to ruin my dress, and . . . I kissed him, but he got mad with me. He _didn’t_ hurt me or anything like that. He was mad because he said I was too young for him, and we couldn’t do that. I started crying, and I stormed out of his apartment. He tried to give me a ride home, but I told him I would call someone to pick me up, so I called Uncle Jaime.” Sansa took a deep breath again, shaking her head. “Nothing happened but that, I promise. I was just being a stupid girl, thinking he liked me when he didn’t.” Sansa looked like she had tears building up in her eyes now at the memory alone.

 

Suddenly, Brienne’s respect for Sandor Clegane just went up a million points. She slowly nodded her head to accept Sansa’s admission of what had happened that day. It was a good thing she had come here today and sorted all of this out. Jaime would finally stop being so obsessed with Sandor Clegane upon hearing this news. Hell, he might even like the guy a little bit for it, which would be a nice change of pace from all of the squabbling.

 

“Well, I am glad to hear that he didn’t hurt you,” Brienne told her with a warm smile. “That was our biggest fear. We were afraid you were too scared to talk to someone about it, and we didn’t want you to suffer in silence if something had happened to you. We worry about you, Sansa. Me and Jaime both. You know we’ve looked out for you for the longest time, and it was our natural reaction to things, but I’m glad to hear everything is okay. Well,” Brienne added a little sadly, “aside from a broken heart, of course.”

 

Sansa gave Brienne the smallest of smiles. “I know he’s too old for me, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt,” she said in almost a whisper.

 

Brienne’s expression was pained because she knew that feeling all too well—well, perhaps not the ‘too old’ part, but the rest of it counted for her once upon a time, too. “Trust me,” Brienne said. “I’ve been through something similar before. Not everyone we like or care for likes or cares for us right back, and it hurts, but we always make it through. One day, you’ll find someone who loves you back for who you are—as I found Jaime.”

 

Sansa’s eyes watered up again, and a few tears fell down her cheeks. She gently wiped them away with her fingers. “I know,” she whispered, and Brienne closed the distance between them to pull Sansa in for a hug. Sansa hugged her right back, wrapping her arms around Brienne’s back. “I’m sorry I’m a mess,” she said against Brienne’s chest.

 

“Nonsense,” Brienne said. “You’re allowed to be a mess,” she joked. “You’re a teenager.”

 

Sansa laughed at that, hugging Brienne tighter. “Yeah, I guess that’s true,” she agreed. She pulled away from Brienne’s embrace. “Thank you,” Sansa said honestly. “For talking to me—and coming to me first about it. I wouldn’t want Sandor to get in trouble because of me, so I’m really thankful for that.”

 

“You’re welcome, Sansa,” Brienne told her with another smile. “Now, let me walk you home before your parents miss you and wonder where you’ve gone off to . . . ”

 

Brienne escorted Sansa safely back home, waved goodbye to her, and got into her car. She drove off for work, turning on the radio and cruising at a steady speed. Brienne was in better spirits herself after her talk with Sansa, and she was looking forward to her next day at Crossroads Camp for Troubled Teens. After all, Sandor needed a few pointers to learn his way around things—and he was going to need some help, too, especially with Sansa’s sister being at the camp. If Brienne knew anything about Arya, she knew one thing.

 

Arya was going to make Sandor’s life a living hell.

 

 


	24. The Wolf’s Gonna Blow It Down

_* * *_

 

Arya had just finished up her ground exercises, which consisted of stretches, jumping jacks, sit ups, and push ups. She talked shit the whole time, too, which so far Sandor had managed to ignore because he knew she was just trying to get a rise out of him for the hell of it. Sansa had already told him that she informed Arya how everything was fine between the two of them now, but Arya had decided for some reason that she was still going to antagonize Sandor despite that. If Arya’s attitude was anything to go by, Sandor was beginning to understand why she was in a camp for troubled teens in the first place. The kid was a nightmare. How the hell did he end up as her camp counselor? Oh, right, Arya had asked for him specifically.

 

Sandor knew she did that shit on purpose, too. You couldn’t torment someone you didn’t see all of the time, and Arya had made it her mission to torment Sandor at every twist and turn. She was biding her time, waiting to get a reaction out of him. So far, Sandor hadn’t caved in, and he hoped he never gave her the satisfaction of it. However, he was beginning to question his own patience. Arya had been getting on his last nerves for the past hour, and while he had managed to ignore her, he wondered how long that was going to last when it came to the rest of the day.

 

Right now, she was swinging on the monkey bars, trying to get from one end to the other in the quickest time possible. She was a small and lithe little kid, so it was easy for her to move fast, but she wasn’t moving fast enough to break her last record. Sandor glanced down at the stopwatch in his hand. Four more seconds, and she missed her window.

 

“Speed it up, kid!” Sandor hollered at her, and Arya suddenly quickened her pace, but the window passed her by. She grasped the last bar, and then she swung herself outwards as she let go. She flew forward and landed perfectly on her feet at the end. “You missed it,” Sandor told her. He held up one finger to indicate by how much time. “One second.”

 

“God _damn_ it,” Arya swore, swinging her fist in the air. She pointed at Sandor. There was a fiery look in her eyes despite the fact that they were a greyish blue color. “It’s your fault,” she accused.

 

Sandor made a face at her. “It’s my fault? What the hell? How?”

 

“You started the timer too soon,” Arya complained, pointing at the stopwatch in his hand. “We’re redoing that over.”

 

“I’m not wasting another thirty seconds on this,” Sandor told her, shaking his head. He gestured towards the climbing wall ahead of all of the other equipment. “It’s time to get your ass on the wall.”

 

Arya was already running back towards the other end of the monkey bars, though. “No!” she called out. “We’re redoing this one! Clear the timer!”

 

“God _damn_ it,” Sandor swore, repeating Arya’s curse, and he lifted the timer to clear it out and refresh it. He glanced up, glaring in Arya’s direction, and waiting for her to get on the damn monkey bars. Arya put both of her hands on the first bar, took a moment to prepare herself, and Sandor waited until she looked like she was ready. “Go!” he hollered out, hitting the start button on the timer at the same time as he said it.

 

Arya started swinging, and she looked like she was moving faster this time. Maybe she would make it. She got to the same place as before two seconds early, quickened her pace at the end, and swung off the edge just like before. Sandor stopped the timer exactly point forty-eight seconds before her original record. He was impressed, but he schooled his face into impassiveness.

 

“You made it,” Sandor said. “Point forty-eight seconds ahead of time.” He didn’t want to praise her with her being so aggravating towards him, but he had to according to the rules. As her camp counselor, Sandor was supposed to give her encouragement to help with the positive reinforcement. He almost choked on saying the words. Sandor had to clear his throat just to get them out. “Good job,” he said gruffly.

 

Arya did fist pumps with both hands. “Yes!” she said, and she did a little celebratory dance in place. “I’m the Queen!” she sang out, still dancing.

 

“All right, enough of that,” Sandor said, still using his gruff voice. He pointed to the climbing wall again. “Get your ass on the wall.”

 

“You get your ass on the wall,” Arya shot back.

 

Sandor’s eyes went wide. “Excuse me? I’m not the one at camp here.”

 

Arya gave him a look like he was the dumbest person in the world, and then she held out both of her arms to indicate their surroundings and looked both ways. “What do you call this, then?” she asked. “This isn’t a camp, and you aren’t in it?”

 

Sandor lifted a finger at her, his anger flaring at the corners. “I’m warning you,” he ground out.

 

“Warn me some more!” Arya called out, and she started running towards the wall. “You can warn me _all_ day long! You aren’t going to do shit!”

 

Sandor growled in the back of his throat. One of these days, he was going to plot some worthy revenge on her for all of this. He could get a hold of one of those Super Soakers, and Arya wouldn’t know what hit her until it was too late. There were also some foam practice weapons, and Sandor had seen a nice sized foam axe among them. He had been eyeing that thing for a few days now. It was made out of foam, so it wouldn’t hurt her, but he could whack her with it and not get in trouble for it.

 

Following Arya over to the climbing wall, Sandor stood about ten feet away from it while she strapped herself with the safety harnesses. She had already placed the helmet on her head. Sandor also realized that even though she knew how to strap herself in them, it was his job to make sure everything was set in place. That way, in case she fell, she wasn’t injured because something came loose. He walked over to her when she was done, and Arya looked up at him in confusion. “What?” she asked, and for once, she didn’t have a snarky comeback.

 

He nodded his head towards her. “I have to check your harnesses,” Sandor told her. “I’m not having you die on my watch. You’ll fall and break your neck, and then where will I be?” He expected a funny comeback to that, but Arya said nothing as he checked each strap to make sure she had fastened them properly in place. When Sandor was done, he stepped back and nodded his head again. “Everything looks good,” he told her, but he looked down at her hands and realized she wasn’t wearing the half gloves and hadn’t chalked her hands. “Wait a minute,” Sandor added, and he looked for the cubby hole, found the gloves and bucket of powdered chalk, and brought those over to her.

 

Arya chalked her hands first, brushing off any excess powder. She then picked out a pair of the half gloves, which left her fingers and part of her hands exposed, and slipped them on. “Thanks,” she said to Sandor, and she looked up at him. Though she wasn’t smiling, Sandor could tell she meant it.

 

“You’re welcome,” he said, and he put everything away before coming back to the front of the wall with his timer. “Are you ready?” Sandor called out to her.

 

“Ready!” Arya called out.

 

“Go!” Sandor hollered, hitting the button on the timer.

 

Arya started climbing the wall. She was slower with this task than she was with the other ones, but she still managed to make pretty decent timing. She made it halfway up the wall without any accidents, but a little bit past the halfway mark, one of her feet slipped and she lost her footing. Arya grabbed onto the wall, and Sandor hurried over to it, but Arya didn’t fall.

 

“You okay?” Sandor called up to her.

 

“Yeah,” Arya called back down, “I just have to get a hold of it again. Give me a second.” Her timing was going to be messed up, but redoing things on the wall took too long and normally, most people slipped from time to time, so it wasn’t that big of a deal anyway. Arya got her positioning back on the wall, and when she started to climb again, Sandor found himself backing away a little bit, but not too far. He was going to stay close in case she slipped again.

 

Arya made her way up to the top without another incident, though, and Sandor looked down and stopped the timer. She was a little bit over her timing from her last climb, but it wouldn’t kill her. “You went over your record from last time,” he told her, and Arya swore again from the top of the wall. She was sitting on the flat surface at the top, still strapped up in the harnesses, and she rubbed one of her hands over her forehead to wipe away the sweat from the climb.

 

“Eh, I’ll get it next time,” she said dismissively, but Arya made no move to get down from the wall. Instead, she stood up all of a sudden and held out her arms. “Hey, Sandor!”

 

“What?” he asked with the smallest tone of annoyance in his voice. Sandor got the strangest sense that he was about to be really irritated by whatever she was going to say next.

 

“I’m on top of the Wall!” she called out, changing the sound of her voice into something deeper and manlier than her real voice. “I have joined the Night’s Watch, an elite and intrepid force who guards the realms of men against the _terrors_ of the night!”

 

“Oh, yeah?” Sandor asked, nonplussed. “What’s that from?”

 

Arya suddenly dropped her arms back to her sides, and her voice returned to normal. “ _A Game of Thrones_ by George R. R. Martin,” she said. “It’s a really good book. Well, the whole series is good.”

 

“Really,” Sandor drawled out, eyeing Arya from the distance. “Your sister hates that book.”

 

Arya rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “My sister has _horrible_ taste in books,” she said.

 

“Uh huh,” Sandor said. “Okay, get down from the wall.”

 

“I want to stay up here a little longer,” Arya said, pacing along the top. She shielded her eyes and looked off in the distance. Arya suddenly changed the sound of her voice again, deepening it. “I can see the _frozen_ wastes ahead of me! Oh, no! Zombified dead are coming our way! Quick! Quick! Break out the fire arrows!”

 

Sandor’s eyes went wide. “Wait, what—fire?” he asked as if he completely forgot this was make-believe. “Why do we need _fire_?”

 

“Only _fire_ can kill the undead!” Arya shouted out. She raised both of her fists into the air and screamed out, “Ahhh, _attack_!”

 

“I’m not playing this game!” Sandor suddenly shouted, pointing up at Arya. “Come on, get down!”

 

Arya started screaming and hollering, and then she fell down on the platform at the top of the climbing wall and started rolling around on top of it. “We’re all gonna _die_!” she cried out, and there was some heavy duty fake weeping involved with her performance. Arya screamed again.

 

“Get _down_!” Sandor shouted at her again, and by now he was getting pissed off. This was fucking ridiculous. She had better listen to him and get down off of that wall.

 

Arya suddenly stopped her performance, and she sat upright on the platform. She was glaring down at Sandor. “You have no sense of humor or adventure,” she told him flatly.

 

“I’ll show you adventure when I climb up that wall and drag you off of it,” Sandor threatened, pointing at her once more.

 

“I’ll fucking kick you in your balls,” Arya shot back.

 

“Hey, _watch_ your fucking language!”

 

“Children, children,” came a new teasing voice to the argument, and Sandor turned around to see Brienne approaching them. “What’s going on here?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips. She glanced upward at the climbing wall towards Arya, and then she turned her gaze back to Sandor. Brienne looked like she was trying to hold back a grin from her face, settling on a smirk instead.

 

“She won’t get off the wall,” Sandor said, and he hated how petulant he sounded when it came out of his mouth.

 

Brienne snapped her fingers without even looking at Arya. “Arya, get off the wall,” she said.

 

Sandor glanced over at the top of the wall again, seeing Arya sigh deeply before she moved to descend down the wall to the bottom. His eyes went wide with disbelief at the sight of Arya listening to a finger snap and command out of Brienne without even putting up a fight. She gave him so much shit about following his orders, but one word out of Brienne, and the girl obeyed like a dog on command. Silently, Sandor fumed under the surface.

 

Arya made it to the bottom, carefully unstrapped herself from the harnesses, and put them aside. She hurried over to the cubby hole, putting away her gloves, and then she took off her helmet and made sure to put that up as well. Arya ran over to Brienne and Sandor next, looking up at Brienne expectantly with a smile on her face. If she wasn’t a girl and she wasn’t sixteen years old, Sandor was so livid he could have hit her. Brienne, however, smiled back at Arya and reached out to pat her on the shoulder.

 

“Head back for the entertainment room,” Brienne told Arya. “This afternoon we’re taking a break for a movie, and you do want to get there first to make first choice, don’t you?” Brienne winked at Arya, and Arya shot a bright grin up at her. Sandor watched as Arya saluted Brienne, shaking his head all the while at Arya’s disgusting display of perfect obedience.

 

“Yes, ma’am!” Arya said happily, and she dashed off in the direction of the entertainment room, running like a madwoman. Sandor watched as she ran off, and then he turned his head to look at Brienne. He sighed deeply, not knowing what else to do.

 

“Has she been giving you a hard time?” Brienne asked him, and she started walking in the same direction Arya had just run off in, so Sandor followed Brienne and walked beside her. The path between the exercise yard and the entertainment room was a large stretch of green grass spotted with enormously tall trees, which gave good cool shade for the area. Though the sun was shining brightly somewhere overhead, it was blocked out by the foliage high above them and a soft shadow was cast over the ground below.

 

“Yeah, she’s been making my life a living hell,” he said, sounding grumpy, and he mentally cursed himself for it. “I haven’t even done anything to her, and she acts like I’m the enemy.”

 

“Girls can be . . . funny like that,” Brienne said, and she almost sounded like she had meant to say something else or add more to it, but she decided against it.

 

“Yeah, well, why did she pick me as her camp counselor if her goal is to make my life hard?” Sandor asked, glancing over at Brienne. “Why didn’t she pick you? She likes you well enough.”

 

Brienne was smirking at some silent joke she wasn’t going to tell him. “I couldn’t say,” Brienne told him, lifting a single eyebrow. “Arya Stark is a prickly one, but something tells me she would pick someone she didn’t like over someone she _did_ like just for the sake of antagonizing them because she enjoys it.”

 

Sandor snorted at that. “I don’t enjoy it,” he said.

 

Brienne laughed at his admission. “No, I don’t believe you do,” she agreed, “but hang in there. I think eventually she will realize you’re not so bad, and she’ll change her mind about you after that.”

 

Suddenly, Sandor thought of how this was a strange conversation to be having with Brienne of all people. She had never liked him in the past, neither her nor Jaime Lannister, and now Brienne was saying he wasn’t so bad and that people could change their mind about him. Sandor wasn’t sure if he would ever get used to Brienne being nice to him, but he supposed he had to start now. They were going to be seeing a lot of each other for as long as this camp was in session, but there was only a month left of it. Maybe it wouldn’t be that long. As long as Brienne wasn’t reaching for her gun in his presence, Sandor imagined things couldn’t be all that bad with her.

 

The two of them made it to the entertainment room just in time to see Arya and her two friends, Hot Pie and Lommy, arguing with the other kids about how they were going to be watching _The Little Mermaid_ this afternoon. Sandor couldn’t believe what he was hearing. First of all, it was a cartoon and a Disney movie. Not that Sandor had ever seen it before, but he knew what it was without having to have seen it. Second of all, he couldn’t imagine Arya liking something like that. She was a brutish tomboy, and here she was, arguing about how they were going to watch _The Little Mermaid_ or she was going to go get the Super Soakers and blast them all with ice cold water.

 

Syrio walked into the room and calmed everyone down with a single _rap_ of his stick against the chalkboard. “You will all be sitting down now,” he said, looking out amongst the teens, and everyone slowly began to take their seats as they stared at him. The kids loved Syrio Forel, but they were also just a little bit scared of him. He was a short man, but a quick and skilled instructor in various fighting techniques, and he had a mop of curly black hair on his head. He aimed his stick out amongst all of the kids, settling it on Arya at last.

 

“Have you chosen the movie today?” he asked her, and Arya nodded her head at his question.

 

“I got here first,” Arya said, “and I picked this one.” She held the case out to him.

 

Syrio used his free hand to grab the movie case. He lifted his eyebrows, and then he looked down at Arya. “ _The Little Mermaid_?” he asked, and there was a tone of incredulity in his voice.

 

“Yes,” Arya said, crossing her arms and looking defiant.

 

“Okay,” Syrio said, tilting his head to the side. “We watch _The Little Mermaid_.” Half of the kids in the room groaned aloud at this, and there were some protests, but Syrio slapped his stick against the chalkboard again, and everyone was silent. “First person here picks the movie,” he informed them, pointing his stick at all of them again. “That is the rule. If you do not like it, you learn to be _quicker_.”

 

A few kids sniggered at this, but overall, it was silent as Syrio Forel popped in the movie. Sandor dropped his head into his hand. “Fucking hell,” he swore, shaking his head, “I am not watching this movie.”

 

Brienne snorted in amusement beside him. “You don’t have much of a choice.”

 

“I can walk out,” Sandor said, lifting his head again to look at her.

 

Brienne gave him a sympathetic look. “Syrio will drag you back in here. Rules also state that everyone must be present for movie breaks. No one is allowed to wander around during a movie, not even the camp counselors.”

 

Sandor looked around the room and noticed that all of the camp counselors who were present for today had shown up in the room, taking seats in the chairs furthest towards the left and right sides of the room. He and Brienne were standing in the back, but there were a few empty chairs ahead of them. Brienne moved to sit down in one of them. Sandor stared at an empty chair for a moment, sighed deeply, and resigned to take a seat. This was a nightmare. An absolute fucking nightmare. He had to watch a Disney movie.

 

This was payback for all the horrible shit he had done in his life, Sandor thought.

 

“I can’t even believe Arya likes this shit,” Sandor said aloud, and though he wasn’t really talking to Brienne, she still answered him.

 

“I didn’t think she did,” Brienne said slowly, sounding confused as well. “Arya isn’t into Disney movies, so I’m just as shocked as you are. Normally, she picks something with lots of violence.”

 

Sandor thought that was strange, but Arya had picked the movie out and now they all had to sit and watch the damn thing. He ended up tuning it out for the most part, taking the time to initiate a quiet conversation with Brienne. One time, though, Syrio saw them talking to each other and slapped his stick against the chalkboard again, slowly aimed it at Sandor and Brienne, and the two of them fell silent for a while. They were too afraid to draw Syrio’s attention to them again. There was something about that man that even put Sandor on edge, and it wasn’t the stick.

 

Sandor wasn’t sure if the movie was halfway over or what, but all of a sudden there was a song playing on it, and Arya, Hot Pie, and Lommy all got up from their seats to face the crowd in the room and sing along with the song. The kids in the room started laughing, even some of the adults, as Arya and her friends put on a little performance.

 

“There you see her,” Arya sang, using a fake accent to match the crab on screen, “sitting there across the way . . . ”

 

“She don’t got a lot to say,” Lommy sang next, “but there’s something about her!”

 

“And you don’t know why,” Hot Pie sang last, “but you’re dying to try — you wanna _kiss_ the girl!”

 

“Yes, you want her,” Arya, Lommy, and Hot Pie all sang together, and all three of them pointed out into the crowd. “Look at her, you know you do!”

 

“It’s possible she wants you, too,” Arya sang out, separating from the boys as she hurried over to the wall to grab a lay hanging on it. “There is one way to _ask_ her!”

 

“It don’t take a word,” Hot Pie sang, “not a single word . . . ”

 

“Go on and kiss the girl!” Lommy sang out loudly, dashing to the other end of the room.

 

“Sha la la la la la,” Arya and Lommy sang together, “my, oh, my, look at the boy too shy! He ain’t gonna kiss the girl!”

 

“Whoa, whoa!” Hot Pie sang right after them.

 

“Sha la la la la la,” Arya and Lommy sang together again, “ain’t that sad! Ain’t it a shame, too bad!” Arya had made her way over to Sandor, and his eyes widened dangerously at her approach. She hurried up behind him, dropping the lay over his head. Sandor was frozen in place as Arya put her hands on his shoulders. “You gonna miss the girl,” she sang, patting his shoulders, and then she hurried off again.

 

They all met at the front again, continuing to sing together this time. “Sha la la la la la, don’t be scared! You got the mood prepared! Go on and kiss the girl! Whoa, whoa! Sha la la la la la, don’t stop now! Don’t try to hide it how you wanna kiss the girl! Whoa, whoa! Sha la la la la la, float along and listen to this song, saying kiss the girl! Whoa, whoa! Sha la la la la la, music play! Do what the music say! You gotta _kiss_ the girl!”

 

Once they were done with the song, the whole room burst into laughter and applause, even Syrio was laughing and clapping. Arya, Lommy, and Hot Pie all grinned ecstatically, and they bowed together to accept the praise for their performance. Sandor tore the lay off his neck and threw it aside, crossing his arms in anger because Arya caught his gaze from the front of the room and grinned devilishly at him. She blew a kiss in his direction, and then she stuck her tongue out at him while she made a ridiculous face.

 

Sandor fumed silently in his seat. It was one thing to attack him with a Super Soaker, and it was one thing to snap back at him when he gave her instructions or orders, but it was another thing altogether when she pulled some shit like this.

 

Next time he saw her, Arya was going to get a nice sized foam axe to the back of her head.

 

 


	25. Make It Feel Right When It’s Wrong Like Lying

_* * *_

 

Sansa was sitting in her room at her vanity, staring at her reflection in the mirror and wondering what was coming over her. She gently tucked a loose curl of auburn hair behind her left ear with her right hand, having taken the curling iron to her hair for a good hour to give it those loose waves that were such a popular look right now. It was a sort of sultry glamorous look, and Sansa was trying to look more sophisticated than usual. After three weeks of seeing Sandor in secret, she was starting to feel less and less like a teen and more like she was slowly evolving into some semblance of an adult. Sansa still spoke with the vocabulary of a teenager half of the time, and she was a lot more playful and carefree than Sandor, which she thought he enjoyed having in his life thanks to her, but she was also a lot more mature mentally than a lot of people gave her credit for despite all of that. Sansa had her moments of immaturity and childishness, but so did most of the adults she knew in her life. It wasn’t something that pertained only to teenagers, and Sansa didn’t know who started that stereotype, but it was a fairly prevalent one.

 

Touching a finger to her bottom lip, she slowly parted her mouth and dragged her finger along her bottom lip. Lipstick would get everywhere, Sansa thought, so she grabbed for her chapstick and applied that instead, and then she picked up a clear gloss that tasted like tart apples and swiped two coats over her top and bottom lips. She forwent foundation makeup because her skin was already very clear and pimple free, a blessing she would never stop being thankful for, but she applied a little bit of peach colored blush to her cheeks to give them a more flushed look. Picking up her waterproof mascara, she put on two coats of that as well, top and bottom lashes, and took a little brow brush to her eyebrows to make sure they were nice and neat.

 

It was a lot of effort to put into her appearance, but Sansa was starting to get a strong rush in her heart rate every time she thought of Sandor or spent time with him. While some of it was probably romantic and she knew she was developing feelings for him, though she definitely wasn’t in love with him or anything like that, some of it was of a much different nature. She kept thinking back on how he had said to her that night on the beach, “ _I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, things you have no idea of, and I’ve served time for a lot of those things. I am a fucked up person still trying to figure out right from wrong_.” Sansa wondered what he meant by that, what he had done, were there people he had done those things to, and just how bad were those things. If they were bad enough to get him locked up in jail or prison or wherever he had been, then maybe there was a side of him she truly didn’t know at all, and in a way, that scared her.

 

The more frightening reaction, however, was that it excited her as well. Sansa had led a very sheltered life with her parents and her family, and while Sandor had told her they didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do, Sansa wondered if Sandor still wanted more from her. After all, he was a man, and from everything she had been told by her parents and everything that was promoted in the movies and magazines and culture in general and all of the stories out of all of her friends’ mouths and her boyfriends’ mouths, men always wanted one thing of women—and that was sex. Sansa had been thinking about it a lot lately. Not about having it, of course. Sansa wasn’t ready for sex. She always figured when she was ready for it, she would just know it, but so far, she hadn’t had that feeling yet and she didn’t expect to have it anytime soon. To put it frankly, Sansa was afraid of sex, and that fear wasn’t going away anytime soon either.

 

No, when Sansa thought about sex, she thought about it from a different angle. A part of her was afraid of what Sandor’s experiences with it were and what his expectations of it were, and then she was also afraid what if he thought of their kissing as her teasing him and not ‘finishing’ what she started with him. A lot of boys said that about girls, and they snickered about it afterwards like it was funny and the girls were stupid for it. Sansa was almost afraid that Sandor would grow tired of her before she was ready for taking things to the next level, and then he would dump her because she didn’t give him what he wanted from her. After all, he was much older than her, and Sansa wasn’t so daft to think that Sandor hadn’t had sex with women before. He had sixteen years on her. Of course, he had sex before. Maybe he was okay with it now, but in a month? Two months? Would he change his mind? Would he try to pressure her?

 

Despite all of this, it wouldn’t have been accurate to say Sansa wasn’t physically attracted to Sandor. It wasn’t accurate to say her body didn’t react pleasantly to everything they did do together and sometimes even when they did nothing at all and he just stood over her shoulder from behind and his hand brushed over her collarbone. Sansa would feel the most immense tingles course through her body at such a slight touch from him. She had also had a dream last night, which had both absolutely terrified her and excited her at the same time, wherein Sandor had shoved her down against her bed and held her down by the throat, his thumb pressing her chin upward, and there was the bite of something cold and hard against her skin near her neck—and Sansa didn’t know what it was or what it was supposed to be because she never saw it in the dream, but it felt like metal—and Sandor hovered above her, and the light from the window flashed green and orange like flames licking into the sky, and she wasn’t sure what that meant either, but it highlighted his face with a terrifying glow.

 

When she had woken up, Sansa had immediately checked her window to make sure nothing like that was actually outside of it, and there was nothing, just the dark night sky beyond smattered with little glowing specks of stars. She thought maybe the dream was because of her worry over his words, over the things he had done that he hadn’t told her about yet, and she tried to dismiss it, but it had been lingering in the back of her mind all day. It was probably what had possessed her to do what she was going to do tonight. As much as she was terrified of the dream, she was excited by it as well. The danger, one could almost say, attracted her when it was mixed with the gentleness she knew of him. She had seen him mildly angry before, but never outright vicious, and she had seen him be kind despite his desire to sometimes be something other than that. Sansa also knew Sandor had a past, and it wasn’t a pretty past, but a dark one. She would feel his hand on her neck touching her so gently, and then she would wonder sometimes just how many people had he grabbed with that same hand and throttled them, punched them, stabbed them, or hurt them—and would he ever do that to her?

 

She shook her head, though, dismissing that last thought. Sandor would never hurt her, she told herself. If he had any intentions to hurt her, he would have done it by now. While the bigger part of her was sure of that, another smaller part of her still feared it somewhere in the background noise of her mind. Sansa ignored that part of her mind, though. It was a natural fear, she thought, of seeing an older man. She had never seen an older man before, but it was probably because of that fear. Well, that and it wasn’t like Sansa had ever really met one who was interesting enough to her for her to give them a second glance and attempt to talk to them like she had done with Sandor at his pub that night.

 

Taking a deep breath and looking into her mirror again, Sansa placed her hand gently upon her chest and regarded her shirt. It was sort of low-cut, but not dramatically so, just enough to be interesting without being too much. It was a simple white shirt, but across part of the chest in a messy but somewhat diagonal fashion, there were little white fabric flowers sewn onto it. Sansa then glanced down at her lap. She had settled on wearing cut off jean shorts, and on her feet, a simple pair of trainers.

 

She looked up at the mirror again, toying with her hair a little bit more with slow motions of her hands, trying to pass the time. When Sansa glanced over at the clock, it flashed in little glowing letters to her _2:37 AM_. Her heart started to pound inside of her chest again, and she picked up her phone to glance at it. Her ride was probably waiting outside already, and she didn’t want to keep Gendry waiting if he was already there. Sansa gathered up her things, putting them into her small purse, and turned off her lamp. She headed out of her room with careful steps, closing the door silently behind her.

 

At the stop of the stairs, she crouched down and looked into the living room. Sansa frowned at first upon what she saw down there. Her parents were still awake, but they weren’t watching for the door or anything like that. A slow song was playing quietly from the television set in the living room, and Ned and Catelyn were slow dancing to it, their arms around each other in a loving embrace. Sansa felt her annoyance diminish at the sight of her parents enjoying such a moment together. It was so lovely to see the two of them still sharing that with each other after all of these years and seven kids later, especially with one of those kids not being her mother’s child, but that was rarely spoken of in the house. It was widely accepted that Jon was part of the family, and while Catelyn sometimes took her anger out on Jon, Sansa didn’t believe that her mother hated him. It was a sore spot for Catelyn, Ned having cheated on her once and having a child as a result of that. The mother had died, it was said, and Jon had no other family to go to, so Ned had taken him into their home.

 

Silently, as she watched them dance, Sansa hoped something like that never happened to her. She couldn’t imagine being married to someone and coming home to find one day that her husband had cheated on her with another woman and had a child with that other woman. Sansa wasn’t so sure she would be as forgiving or as strong as her mother had been in that situation. Sansa would probably divorce any man who did that to her, and then she would leave him on the side of the road. While Sansa loved her father, a part of her hated him for what he had done to her mother, even if she loved Jon sometimes better than her other brothers. It wasn’t right what he had done to Catelyn.

 

Sansa crouched on the staircase for some time, anxiously waiting for her parents to make an exit or move to at least another part of the house. When it looked like that wasn’t going to happen, Sansa crept back up to her bedroom and headed for the window. She opened it up carefully, peeked her head out, and looked down. There was some roofing outside of her window above an extended portion of house below, so Sansa crawled out onto it and walked to the edge, crouched down, and slid her way off of it. She held onto the ledge, lowering her body, and then let go. Quietly, she landed on the ground below. Sansa quickly looked around their yard, and when she saw nothing and no one out here, she hurried towards the road and ran to the end of it.

 

Gendry’s car was waiting at the curb much like Sandor’s car often waited at the curb for her, and Sansa rushed herself into the passenger seat, shutting the door behind her and buckling up. “Sorry I’m late,” she said quickly, looking up at Gendry from her seatbelt.

 

Gendry was staring at her with wide eyes. “Wow, Sansa,” he said. “You’re really . . . done up.”

 

Sansa glared at Gendry. “Don’t even,” she warned him.

 

Gendry held up his hands from the steering wheel. “I wasn’t,” he told her. “I promise.”

 

“Let’s go before I’m any later,” she said breathlessly, and Sansa turned her head to look out of the window as Gendry pulled off from the curb. It was silent for a little while until Gendry spoke up.

 

“You know, I feel kind of bad,” Gendry said, “helping you sneak out like this. I should be more responsible and tell you to stay home this late at night.”

 

“But you won’t,” Sansa said faintly, gazing out of the window of his car.

 

Gendry sighed. “No, you’re right,” he agreed. “I won’t. I can’t be a hypocrite. I see your sister, after all. Just not _this_ late at night.”

 

Suddenly, Sansa was struck with the urge to ask Gendry a personal question about him and her sister. It was something she wondered for the longest time, but she had never gotten up the courage to ask either one of them about it. “Gendry,” she began, turning to look at him, “have you and my sister ever . . . ”

 

“Hm?” Gendry asked, completely oblivious to whatever she was getting at. “Ever what?”

 

“Ever . . . you know . . . ” Sansa didn’t want to say it out loud because, to be honest, it was quite awkward to be asking Gendry this in the first place, but she had already started the question, so she might as well finish it. “Had sex?” she finally asked him.

 

Gendry’s eyes went really wide, and his mouth twisted into three different funny shapes as he pondered whether he should answer that question or not. “You know, Sansa,” Gendry started, and he coughed all of a sudden, “I don’t know that I feel comfortable talking about that with you. If you really want to know, maybe you should ask Arya.”

 

Sansa sighed deeply and turned away from him to look out the window again. “Sorry, you’re right. That is an awkward question to ask you.”

 

“Good,” Gendry said quickly. “Good that you know that.”

 

If Gendry was curious about why she had asked that question, he didn’t say anything about it. They talked occasionally as he drove down the streets, and they eventually came up to Sandor’s familiar apartment complex, looming high and dark against the street. Gendry parked the car, and then he glanced over at Sansa.

 

“Here you go, my lady,” he said. “This is your stop.”

 

Sansa smiled at Gendry. “Thank you, Gendry, for the ride again,” she told him, and she got out of the car.

 

“Be safe,” Gendry said, lifting his eyebrows at her, and Sansa almost wondered what he meant by that because it wasn’t like she walking into the path of a train or anything. She was just going to Sandor’s apartment.

 

“I will,” Sansa said, and she shut the door to his car. Gendry waited on the corner until Sansa made it inside of the apartment complex. She imagined he probably wouldn’t drive off until she was off of the street, but despite the fact that it was in the middle of the night and everything was dead, Sansa didn’t hear a car pulling off once she was inside. Now that she was here, her nervousness was increasing with each step she took down the hallways. Sansa took the stairs this time instead of the elevator. Extending the walk would give her time try and calm herself before she reached his apartment. It was past three in the morning already, so Sansa knew he would be home from work.

 

As she rounded her way up the topmost part of the steps near his floor, Sansa turned a corner and ran _smack_ into someone really tall and nearly fell backwards down the stairs, but a pair of strong arms grabbed her and stopped her fall. Sansa clutched onto his arms, and when she looked up, she was looking up into Sandor’s incredulous face. Sansa’s mouth fell open in shock. Since when did he take the stairs, anyway?

 

“Are you trying to kill us both?” Sandor asked her, giving her that same incredulous look as he said it. “It’s a long fall down those steps.”

 

“No, I’m sorry,” Sansa suddenly said, shaking her head. She had no idea why she was apologizing to him, and it made her give out a nervous little laugh.

 

“What are you doing here this late at night?” he asked her next.

 

“I . . . ” Sansa began, but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. “I wanted to come see you,” she finally said when she managed to get it unstuck.

 

Sandor didn’t seem to be happy about seeing her at all. He kept staring at Sansa with that same screwed up look on his face. “At three in the morning?” he asked. “In the pitch black of night?”

 

Sansa found whatever words she was going to say next die in her throat. Every time she tried to surprise him, something always went wrong. Clearly, Sandor didn’t like surprises. It was all she could figure to explain his reactions to them. She just stared dumbly at him in silence.

 

“What?” Sandor barreled on. “Don’t have anything to say?”

 

Sansa wrenched her arms away from him, suddenly angry at the way he was talking to her. “What is _wrong_ with you?” she asked him. “You never talk to me like this.”

 

Sandor looked like he was going to say something to that, but he held it back behind tightly closed lips. He looked away from her for a moment, passing his hand over his mouth, and finally turned back to look at her. “It’s too late for you to be here,” Sandor said. He gently put his hand on her back and urged her forward with him towards his apartment. “Let me get my keys. I’ll take you back home—”

 

Sansa moved away from him again, and Sandor froze in the hallway, turning to look at her once more. “No,” Sansa protested all of a sudden. “I came all the way out here to see you and spend some time with you. I’m not going back home so soon.”

 

Sandor stared at her. His eyes were fixed on her face, but slowly they looked to the side, taking in the changes she had made with her hair, and then they fell down, taking in her choice of clothing for tonight. Sandor stared a lot longer than was necessary, and Sansa felt a lump building up in her throat. She tried to swallow it down. Maybe this was a bad idea. Why had she wanted to come here so late? Sansa didn’t really think about the time. She mostly had just thought about seeing him after he got off of work, and usually he was home some time before three or right at three. Sansa had put effort into the dressing up on purpose, and she had snuck out on purpose, but she didn’t think there was any significance in the hour of her arrival—or did she, and she just forgot?

 

Before she could reason things any further in her head, Sandor was approaching her. Sansa instinctively backed up a step or two, which caused him to freeze in place. His eyes met hers, and Sansa registered the look of pain inside of them. Instantly, she regretted her action, not knowing what had caused it in the first place.

 

“Are you scared of me?” Sandor asked her quietly, and Sansa shook her head, but she didn’t say anything. Things at three in the morning were different than things at three in the afternoon, and the electric charge crackling in the air was unmistakable. At her denial, Sandor closed the last few steps between them, and his hand reached out to take her gently by the wrist. He walked her to the door of his apartment in silence, and Sansa followed him, but her heart was pounding again, and it beat so hard it hurt.

 

Once they were inside of his apartment, Sandor closed the door with his free hand, but his other hand was still on her wrist. Sansa expected him to let it go, or she expected him to go into the kitchen and offer her something to eat or drink maybe, or she even expected he might offer once more to take her back home—back to the cage of her room that she wanted to be free of—but none of those things happened next.

 

While holding onto her wrist, Sandor shoved her against the door to his apartment, and Sansa couldn’t help it—a sudden squeak of surprise came out of her mouth. Her breathing escalated really quickly, and all of sudden she was looking up at his face as Sandor regarded her from above. His free hand, however, was oddly gentle, and it came up to the side of her face to stroke the backside of his fingers along her cheekbone. Sandor’s eyes were dark in the wash of night, but Sansa could still see a small gleam inside of them, and it was intoxicating but terrifying all at once. She was reminded of his past again, but instead of being afraid like she ought to be, Sansa was strangely attracted to it.

 

“Is this what you came here for?” Sandor asked her, his voice made lower on purpose—and deeper as well, and Sansa suddenly thought of her dream again, remembering the danger she had felt in it. Sandor had been so gentle with her so far, but she wondered if he wasn’t holding back and it wasn’t a battle of self-control every step of the way with him. Here she was, of course, teasing him and breaking down the corners of his willpower, showing up in the middle of the night with god knows what in mind for them to do.

 

His hand on her cheek felt good, though, and Sansa was looking up at him, tilting her head against the door. She nodded her head at Sandor’s question, and to her own shock, found her back arching and her chest pushing out towards his. At her reaction, Sandor pressed into her until he had Sansa pinned against the door with his body, and with his hand on the back of her neck, stroking the skin before gripping her hard, he leaned down to capture her lips in a heady kiss. Sansa melted against him, falling limp upon the door, and lifted her hands to his chest, running them up to his neck to hold him there as he held her.

 

Everything before with Sandor had been quite gentle and restrained up until this point, and Sansa wasn’t sure what caused the change, but Sandor was rougher with her. She felt his blunt nails digging into the skin of her neck, which seemed to hurt somewhat, but she tried to ignore it. His lips opened wide, his mouth pressed hard, and his tongue was demanding for leverage. Sansa squirmed between Sandor’s body and the door, both turned on and scared of his actions at the same time, and when his teeth bit down on her bottom lip and pulled—it hurt, and she made a noise in the back of her throat, but not even Sansa could tell if it was in pleasure or pain.

 

They kissed like that for some time with her pinned against the door and with nothing more than the sensual contact of lips, tongue, and sometimes painful teeth, their hands on each other’s necks, until Sandor hoisted her up all of a sudden. In her surprise Sansa grabbed around his shoulders with her arms for balance and wrapped her legs around his waist to help her hold onto him. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she registered his hands went from her sides to her bottom to hold her up, but it didn’t seem all that important. Sandor was just holding her up, so Sansa paid no mind to it.

 

Eventually, Sandor pulled her away from the door. She was very light for someone like him to carry, so he had no trouble with toting her as he started to carry her off somewhere else. Sansa thought maybe he was bringing her to the couch. They had made-out a lot on his couch before, but she didn’t notice where they were going until the darker lighting of the hallway descended around her and closed in, and suddenly, Sansa felt a spike of fear—he was carrying her off to his bedroom.

 

Sandor had never brought her into his bedroom before. It was one of his unspoken rules. No bedroom. No bed. Sansa clutched tighter around his head and neck, wondering why now he was breaking it.

 

Her arms lowered themselves around his shoulders and gripped him tightly there as Sandor dipped forward, lowering her down onto his bed. He captured Sansa’s lips in another kiss once her back was to the mattress, and Sansa felt his body on top of hers as he crawled onto the bed with her. His weight was heavy and almost crushing, and Sansa was beginning to feel like she was having trouble breathing, but then he propped one of his hands against the bed and removed a good bit of the weight from her chest. Sansa pulled away from his mouth long enough to take a deep breath, but she gasped all of a sudden as Sandor descended quickly to kiss her again, delving his tongue into her mouth and catching her tongue with it, and she moaned softly somewhere in the bottom of her throat. Her hands grasped onto the back of his head. It all felt so good, but it was really fast. Really, really fast.

 

Sandor used his teeth again, and Sansa was beginning to be afraid she’d have bruises in the morning she’d have to explain to her parents. She didn’t know Sandor was so rough—was this what he really liked, not the soft and gentle touches they had been sharing so far? Had she judged him wrong and expected something completely different out of him? It caused sharp spikes of intense sparks to shoot through her nerves, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up at the harsh contact, but at the same time, he was actually starting to frighten her a little bit.

 

Suddenly, she registered his hand was on the side of her body, nowhere it shouldn’t be, but he was slowly stroking it up and down, and the movement caused her shirt to rake up and expose some of her tummy. Again, it caused the most pleasant electric shocks in her body, but she wanted to tell him to stop. There was a desire pooling in her belly, but a fear pooling in her heart. Sandor descended from her mouth to her chin, nipping at it, and then he was traveling down to her neck, where he kissed her, licked the skin, and then he _bit_ her—

 

“Ow, stop it—” Sansa said softly, and she gently pushed at his shoulders, but Sandor didn’t seem to hear her, and his nails dragged along the flesh on her side and his tongue was on her neck again, and then his teeth bit down where he had licked her, harder this time, and Sansa shoved at his shoulders. “Stop it!” she hollered at him, and her fist came down on his shoulder. Sandor suddenly pulled away from her, staring down at her with a wild look on his face and in his eyes like the one he had the night he punched Theon. His chest was moving rapidly up and down. Sansa could see him breathing fast through his mouth as he stared at her.

 

Both of Sandor’s hands were propped against the bed now, and he dropped his forehead to her collarbone, but not to kiss her again. He took one deep breath after another, heaving them in and out. Sansa wanted to put her hands in his hair, but she was afraid to touch him again after telling him to stop. He might think she wanted to start again, and right now, she didn’t.

 

Without a word, Sandor pushed himself off of her body and off of the bed. He paced around the edge of the bed for a moment, but then he took off for the door. Sandor disappeared from the room and down the hallway. Sansa heard another door shut, and even though it wasn’t slammed, the sound caused her to flinch in response. His lack of words caused a deep, sinking feeling in her heart. God, he had wanted more, and she had made him stop. Sansa didn’t normally cry a whole lot. Very few things could make her cry, but she was afraid now of what was going to happen next. Not that she thought he would try to do anything else or hurt her, but he was angry. She had felt it radiating off of him as he paced around the edge of the bed.

 

She sat on his bed alone for a little while, not very long, her arms circling her chest as a few tears spilled down her cheeks. It subsided eventually, and she heard Sandor moving down the hallway again. Sansa looked up, but she didn’t see him pass the doorway. A moment later, she heard him in the kitchen, running the water, and she wondered what he was doing. Not much longer after that, Sandor reappeared in the doorway of his bedroom, holding up a glass of water to his mouth, and he walked over to the bed to sit down on the edge of it, though that made it where his back was to her.

 

Sandor didn’t seem to notice she had been crying, which she wasn’t anymore so maybe that was why. It was also dark and no lights were on, just the faint glow of the street lights and city lights outside of his bedroom window, so he wouldn’t have seen the tear streaks on her face. Sansa wanted to say something to break the silence, so she spoke up to get his attention.

 

“I’m sorry,” Sansa said to him, and it came out as barely a whisper.

 

Sandor was quiet for a moment, and she saw him take another drink from his glass. When he lowered it again, he answered her. “You know, you don’t have to apologize for everything.”

 

“But you were angry,” Sansa whispered, feeling she had to address it.

 

Sandor lowered his head, and he sighed deeply. Sansa saw the motion through his back, though she barely heard his breath as it exhaled. She thought he was going to say nothing because he was quiet for some time, but then he answered her again.

 

“I wasn’t angry at you,” Sandor told her, though Sansa wondered why he wouldn’t look at her if he wasn’t angry with her. Why was he so different tonight? It was like that night at the pub when she went back to see him again. Sandor was acting different with her, and he wasn’t saying why. However, it caught Sansa’s attention that if he wasn’t angry with her, who was he angry with? There were only two of them here, so . . .

 

He was angry with himself.

 

Sansa seemed to finally understand, though she wondered if this wasn’t going to be a problematic aspect of their relationship. It echoed all of her fears from earlier. Sandor was an older man. He was used to much more than just kissing and things stopping there, and Sansa didn’t want to go further. Things were so much easier when they were just friends, but in those days, Sansa had wanted more and she had been the one denied it. Those two things were different, and yet in some ways they were still the same.

 

Sansa stayed on the bed where she was, staring at his back for what felt like a long time. Sandor never turned around to look at her, and while she couldn’t say why he did that, it eventually gave her some modicum of courage to approach him on the bed. Sansa gently laid her hand on his shoulder, and she felt the tension in Sandor’s muscles, but despite that, he didn’t pull away from her. She slowly wrapped her arms around his neck and shoulders, settling herself against his back. Sandor remained tense at first, but Sansa felt him relaxing in her arms.

 

She wanted to talk to him about it, but some part of Sansa already understood what was going on with him, and she didn’t know if talk would put him more on edge or not, so she decided against it. Resting her chin on his shoulder, she glided her fingers through his hair as the other arm remained wrapped around his shoulders somewhere below her chin. Sandor eventually leaned into her, and Sansa glanced over with just her eyes to see that his were closed.

 

Despite it seeming kind of senseless, Sansa still wanted to kiss him. Nothing bad had happened, after all. Sandor wasn’t mad with her. He hadn’t raised his voice at her, or said anything cruel to her, and it didn’t feel like he was wound up anymore. Her fears hadn’t been based in Sandor forcing himself on her or anything horrible like that, just him getting mad at her. He wasn’t mad at her, though, so it wasn’t a big deal anymore. Sansa wondered if maybe she hadn’t just caught him on a bad night. Maybe something had happened at work that she didn’t know about. When she first arrived, Sandor had already been on edge. Maybe none of it was her fault anyway, and maybe he hadn’t gotten so carried away simply because of her.

 

“Did something happen tonight?” Sansa ventured, not feeling the least bit frightened of anything anymore.

 

Sandor didn’t answer her right away. He leaned his head into her hand, breathing deeply and letting it go. “Yeah,” he said.

 

Sansa released a deep breath she hadn’t known she had been holding inside of her. It wasn’t all because of her, then. Her own muscles found complete relaxation with that admission, and she held him a little closer. “What happened?” she asked softly.

 

“Just some bullshit,” Sandor said, shaking his head, and if he didn’t want to elaborate, then Sansa wasn’t going to push it. They were still in many ways getting to know each other now that they were seeing each other, and it had changed the whole playing field around them. Being involved with Sandor let her see things that she hadn’t seen when she had just been friends with him, things Sandor had held back from her, but he wasn’t always trying to hold them back anymore, and Sansa could see there was something dark in him. Something buried deep, but maybe not deep enough that it couldn’t come to the surface from time to time.

 

She was beginning to understand his words that night on the beach and how true they were, and while maybe it should have made her grow some sense and scare her off, Sansa wrapped her arms around him a little closer and scooted until her legs were wrapped around him, too. “Sansa . . . ” Sandor began, but she didn’t want him to say anything, so she took his earlobe between her lips and nipped at it before pulling back and slowly dragging her tongue along it. His free hand rested itself on her knee, and as she began kissing and playing with his ear, Sandor ran his hand downwards along her calf instead of upwards, avoiding her thigh.

 

He pulled away from her all of a sudden, startling Sansa, and walked over to the nightstand to put down the glass of water in his hands. Sandor went to lie down on the bed, resting his back against the mattress and his head on one of the pillows. He was staring at Sansa in the dark, and he lifted his chin up in a beckoning gesture. “Come here,” Sandor murmured, and there was a gruff quality to his voice, but that was typical of him.

 

Sansa felt that familiar quickening of her heart rate, and even though she wondered if this was really a good idea, she did it anyway. Crawling across the bed, Sansa settled herself over him. She straddled his waist, but Sandor made no move to touch her with his hands. Sansa leaned forward, propping her hands against the bed. Despite everything, she found herself smiling down at him.

 

“You need to learn to relax,” she whispered to Sandor. “You’re too wound up. Like a taut bungee cord ready to spring all over the place.”

 

Sandor sighed at that, briefly shutting his eyes. “Maybe,” he said.

 

“If I kiss you again, are you going to go crazy again?” she asked, but there was a gentle teasing quality to her voice.

 

Sandor opened his eyes, lifting his brow. “You can tie my hands down if it makes you feel better,” he told her, and despite the serious tone of his voice, Sansa could tell he was joking. She let out an amused huff of air from her nose along with a little sound from her throat, and she leaned forward until her lips softly pressed against his in chaste kiss with no tongue. When she pulled back a fraction of an inch, Sandor said close to her mouth, “You know, I’m not joking about the tying thing. Go on and wrap me up.”

 

Sansa couldn’t help it. She laughed out loud. “I’m not tying you up.”

 

“You never know, you might like it.”

 

Sansa gently slapped his chest. “Stop it,” she said, still laughing. “Stop talking like that.”

 

“Like what?” Sandor asked, his eyes gleaming up at her in the dark.

 

“Like that,” she said. “Like sex talk.”

 

“That’s not sex talk,” Sandor told her. “That’s sensibility talk.”

 

Sansa laughed yet again. Things weren’t uncomfortable anymore. Whatever had been bothering Sandor, he seemed to have let it go for now while he was in her presence. Sansa was grateful for it. She knew Sandor had problems, but Sandor was working on overcoming those problems and trying to change things for himself. He was trying to be a better person from what he used to be, and if Sansa couldn’t understand that struggle, then she had business being with him in the first place.

 

Thankfully, she felt she understood, and she didn’t want to judge Sandor for it. They were bound to have misunderstandings or uncomfortable situations from time to time. Sansa just had to brace herself for them and not hold them against Sandor. At least, she hoped things would always be ironed out this smoothly, but that wasn’t a given.

 

Pursing her lips together, a thoughtful expression bloomed over Sansa’s face as she looked down at Sandor. “I have an idea,” she whispered.

 

“What’s that?” Sandor asked.

 

“Let’s play a game,” Sansa said, and she held up her hands with her fingers splayed out. “Hold up your hands like this,” she instructed him. Sandor seemed unperturbed by her instructions, so he did as she asked and held up his hands. Sansa linked their fingers together, gripping his hands with hers, and pressed them down against the bed. “These are the rules,” Sansa informed Sandor, looking him straight in the eyes. “Only kissing is allowed. You must hold hands the entire time. You can’t let go. No touching is allowed. No grinding is allowed. Lips, tongue, teeth, all acceptable.” Sansa shook her head. “Hands are not. If you ever get the urge to touch, you squeeze hands—don’t let go. If you let go, the game is over and the kissing stops.” She leaned closer all of a sudden. “But if you use your teeth, don’t bite so hard. If it hurts, I don’t like it.”

 

Sandor stared at her in the dark, but his face gave nothing away. Finally, he shrugged. “Sounds easy enough,” he said.

 

“So says the man who nearly jumped me earlier,” Sansa shot back, but there was a small smile on her face.

 

Sandor tilted his head to the side, narrowing his eyes at her. “Have you looked at yourself in a mirror lat—”

 

Before he could finish his sentence, Sansa silenced him with a kiss. They were slow at first. There was no rush to their actions. Sansa kissed him gently, and Sandor returned it with slow and careful motions of his lips against hers. He was loose and relaxed beneath her, and Sansa drew their hands up a little higher on the bed until they were beside Sandor’s head. She finally parted her lips, touching her tongue to his bottom lip, and Sandor opened his mouth for her.

 

She probed outward with a soft moan, and Sandor met her halfway. Still, things were unhurried between them. It seemed to go on like that for some time until Sansa deepened the kiss even further, a pleasurable sound echoing through her mouth to his, and Sandor groaned at that—and for the first time, she felt his fingers grip at hers a little tighter before loosening again.

 

Pulling back, Sansa slowly flicked her tongue against his lips, and Sandor tried to reach up to kiss her again, but she pulled back even more to avoid him. When she lowered herself closer to him once more, she flicked out her tongue a second time and Sandor rose up again, but Sansa pulled back a third time. Sandor stared at her through heavy lidded eyes, and then he launched forward to capture her mouth in another kiss before she had time to pull away from him again. Sansa caved in this time, allowing him to win it, and returned the fervor of his lips and tongue.

 

Sandor’s hands squeezed hers again, and she turned her head to kiss him from a different angle, moaning gently in the back of her throat. Sansa felt his hands suddenly push upwards. She shoved them back down to the bed, pulling away from his mouth long enough to smile at him before capturing his mouth with her lips again. Sandor kissed her deeply, his head pushing upward towards hers, his hands lifting off of the bed again. Sansa shoved his hands down again, laughing against his mouth, but her laugh was cut off by a soft moan as Sandor’s tongue swirled against hers.

 

Sansa was beginning to believe Arya was right about older men knowing how to use their tongues.

 

His hands tightened on hers again, gripping her hard. Sansa pulled back once more, breaking apart their lips to flick her tongue against the area right below his bottom lip, and she felt Sandor trying to pull one of his hands free from hers. She tried to stop him by gripping him tighter, too, but Sandor was stronger than her, and he freed his hand and grabbed the back of her head with it. Sandor drew Sansa back down to his lips, capturing her in another kiss, but her eyes shot open because he had broken the rules. Sansa quickly pulled away from him, wiggling out of the grasp of his hand, and turned her head away.

 

“Oh, come on,” she heard Sandor say, and it was near her ear because she had turned her head sideways to him, but Sansa closed her eyes and swiftly shook her head as she moved herself off of his waist and onto the bed beside him.

 

“Nope,” Sansa said, sounding a little bit too chipper about it. “You broke the rules. Kissing stops.”

 

“Sansa—”

 

“Nope,” she said again, turning over to look at him. Sansa pointed her finger at Sandor. “Kissing stops.”

 

Sansa turned back over to put her back to Sandor, but Sandor grabbed her from behind, and Sansa squealed—but he only dragged her towards him on the bed. He kept his arm firm around her middle as he lay behind her, and he buried his face in her hair. “The least you can do is not lie so far away,” Sandor said into her hair, his voice muffled.

 

“Okay,” Sansa answered him softly, and her hand sought out the arm he had wound around her body. She passed her fingers as light as air across his skin, brushing against the hairs of his arm as well. His breathing settled behind her, and Sansa found herself closing her eyes.

 

She was supposed to go back home tonight, but she completely forgot about it, falling asleep in his arms instead.

 

 


	26. I’ll Never Wake Up Without an Overdose

_* * *_

 

Sandor was a light sleeper, so when Sansa’s foot collided with his lower back, his eyes shot open immediately at the contact. He blinked them once or twice, but there was an extreme sensation of grogginess hanging over his mind, and he wasn’t fully awake yet. It must have been fairly early in the morning still for him to be feeling like that. Normally, when Sandor woke up, he was up instantly. He rolled over in the bed, glancing over at Sansa. She was at the opposite end of the mattress and he was on the other, previously with their backs to each other, and somehow during the middle of the night she managed to huddle herself underneath his sheets. Sansa was turned at an angle, though, where her legs were closer to him and her head was at the edge of the bed. Last night came flashing back to him at the sight of her, and Sandor lay on his back again, running his hands over his face.

 

There had been a bar fight at the pub last night, and two fuckers had nearly killed each other in his establishment. While they didn’t end up killing each other, they did manage to break various goddamn things in the process. Sandor had grabbed one of them from behind and locked his arms in place, and Asha had tackled the other—she was damn strong for a woman—and the two of them separated the men until the police arrived at the pub. Who else had to come by, too, but Jaime fucking Lannister. He arrived without his partner, Brienne, but with some rookie kid whose name Sandor didn’t know and didn’t care to find out. Lannister took care of the bar fighters, but he slapped a fine on Sandor for some bullshit regulations code. The only thing that prevented Sandor from jumping Jaime Lannister right then and there was the fact that he didn’t want to get fucking arrested for assaulting a police officer, and it would have happened if he did it.

 

Frankly, Sandor didn’t see the point in telling all of that to Sansa. It wasn’t like there was anything she could do about it, and telling her wasn’t going to change anything. He had been going downstairs to get some ice from one of the ice machines down in the lobby because he was out, and he didn’t want to have to make any and wait on it, and his shoulder was throbbing because one of the fuckers cracked a thick goddamn liquor bottle on him. It was already bruised by the time he got home last night. Sandor had chosen to take the stairs because he needed the exercise to work off his anger as usual. While he generally took the elevator, if he took the elevator last night, he would have ended up punching various dents into its walls.

 

Before he even hit the first step, he had run into Sansa coming up them. Shock wasn’t a strong enough word to use to describe what he felt, seeing her there in his apartment complex at three in the morning. Sandor forgot all about the ice, and his initial instinct was there was no fucking way he was bringing her into his apartment that late at night, so he was going to take her straight home. Of course, that hadn’t gone to plan. When she had insisted she wasn’t going back home and she was going to spend some time with him, Sandor was floored—and because of that he was staring at Sansa, and when he started staring at her, he started noticing the way she had curled her hair, the makeup, the low-cut top, the short jean shorts, and her long legs underneath them.

 

Then, his thoughts hit rock fucking bottom.

 

During the day, Sandor could resist her. It was odd, and he didn’t know why. There was no logic to it. If the sun was up, things were safe. But if it was nighttime, things got muddled in his head. Sandor had taken one look at her, one real look, absorbed in everything about her appearance, and suddenly, he imagined slamming her up against a wall—and that wasn’t a very good thought to be having with her nearby. He had approached her, and Sansa backed away from him, which made Sandor freeze in place. She had never backed away from him before, but she was breathing hard like some part of her was scared, and another thought hit Sandor. Was she scared of him? After everything he had told her to assure her, was she actually afraid of him? Why was she there, then, at his apartment at three in the morning if she was going to back the fuck away from him?

 

Sandor had taken her into his apartment when she didn’t back away a second time, and to be honest, all intent to bring her home was gone before he even shut the door. An accumulation of everything—the bar fight, the throbbing shoulder, Jaime Lannister, the fucking fine he had to pay, Sansa all dressed up for his eyes only, and then Sansa acting afraid of him, backing away from him—all of it, just all of it, and Sandor had shoved Sansa against the door. She had wanted to spend some time with him, did she? Well, fuck it. They were going to do what _he_ wanted to do, then.

 

Gentleness was okay, but it wasn’t thrilling. It didn’t really get his rocks off, but so far Sandor had been gentle with Sansa because she was so young and innocent and fragile—but something possessed him last night, and he wanted to tear her out of that mind frame. The world wasn’t some fucking gigantic ball pit, all cushioned up and soft to protect you with each bump and fall. It was a hard, harsh world, and Sandor was hard, harsh man when it came down to things. Sure, he had a gentle side—but it was a side of him, it wasn’t _him_. There was a difference. Sandor liked it rough—and the more bruises there were, the better it was. Of course, this never applied when they were just friends because Sandor never laid a hand on her like that in those days, wouldn’t even let himself think of her that way if he could help it, but now Sansa pervaded everything and everyday the lines were blurring more and more.

 

He had broken his own fucking rule last night. No bedrooms, no beds. Sandor wasn’t having sex with a seventeen-year-old, but, fuck it, if he hadn’t gotten carried away last night. He should have never brought her in there, anyway. There was no telling how far he might have gone if Sansa hadn’t hit him and told him to stop—and that scared Sandor. Despite all of his moral protests at the idea, his body constantly betrayed him in her presence. It was why he didn’t want Sansa there in his apartment at three in the morning, in the darkness of night, when all the walls came down and there was nothing standing between them to stop him from doing something incredibly stupid.

 

It was morning now, though, and things were different in the morning. Sandor rolled his head over and looked at her again as she lay on the other side of the bed, and he defied every previous instinct he ever had with women the morning after—never mind the fact that nothing actually _happened_ last night—and moved closer to Sansa until he was lying against her back. His legs folded behind hers, his face pressed close to the back of her head, and his arm wound around her middle and pulled her closer to him. It was a gentle thing, whereas he didn’t normally like gentle things, but holding her was one of the few gentle things that probably topped everything else altogether. Sandor didn’t know why, but holding her was incredibly peaceful, and he could do it all day if they had the time to waste for it.

 

Sansa stirred in her sleep after he had pulled her close, making a soft noise in the back of her throat, and pressed herself backwards into his embrace. Sandor had moved his head down somewhat, and now it was close to her neck, and he breathed on it. Sansa suddenly shivered in his arms, starting in her shoulders, and then it worked its way down through her arms and back. Amused at her reaction, he breathed on her neck again, and Sansa shivered a second time, stirring awake even more. She moaned somewhere in her throat yet again, and her bottom pushed against him, her hand reaching over and landing on his thigh. Sandor’s eyes went wide, and he pulled away from her by sitting up to put some distance back between them.

 

That woke Sansa up all the way, and she rolled over in the bed to look blearily over at him, blinking her mind into reality. When she saw where she was and who was in bed with her, her eyes shot wide open and she grasped the sheet and pulled it up to her chin like she was naked underneath it. It was funny, Sandor thought, how different her awake reaction was to her half asleep reaction. After all, she grasped _his_ thigh.

 

“Good morning, sunshine,” Sandor told her, and he decided to remind her of how she got here—just in case she forgot, if the look on her face was anything to go by. “You came over last night, and you fell asleep in my bed,” he informed her.

 

As if it was at all possible, Sansa’s eyes grew wider. “What time is it?” she asked, hurrying to sit upright in the bed, casting the sheet aside, and running her hands through her hair as if to try and straighten it out so it didn’t look too messy. Sansa slid off of his bed, pulling down on her jean shorts, which had raked up in her sleep. Sandor glanced over at his clock, narrowing his eyes at it.

 

“Seven oh nine,” he said slowly, reading the time on it. Then, “Fuck, that’s early.”

 

It was meant to be a thought, but it came out as words. No wonder he was so groggy when he woke up this morning. Three hours of sleep was simply not enough sleep to be had before starting his day.

 

Sandor turned back to Sansa. She was facing him fully now and looking at him, and his eyes fell to her neck. There were two bruises on it from where he had bitten her last night. Sandor’s initial reaction was to admire his handiwork until he thought of how that was going to look to everyone else who saw them. He had no way to help her cover those up either. She was on her own, even if it was his fault they were there in the first place.

 

“You’ve got, uh,” Sandor began, gesturing at his own neck as he said it, “bruises on your neck.”

 

Sansa looked down, even though there was no way in hell she was going to be able to look at her neck without a mirror, and cursed out loud. “ _Shit_ ,” she said, but then she was shaking her head and raising it again. “I’ve got to get home,” Sansa told him hurriedly. The bruises seemed to be the last thing on her mind of things to worry about today.

 

“I’ll take you,” Sandor said, and he got off the bed. He had pulled on a different set of clean clothes when he had gotten home last night, especially since he was walking out of his apartment in the middle of the night, so he hadn’t slept in boxers or anything. Sandor slipped on a pair of shoes and walked out of his bedroom to snag up his wallet and keys and phone, and then he held open the door for Sansa to walk through it. Sandor shut the door of his apartment behind them, and then he led Sansa outside to his parked car.

 

The drive to her house was for the most part in complete silence. Sansa didn’t seem to have much to say, and Sandor was too tired to really start a conversation. Once he reached her street, he drove up closer to her house than normal, stopping at the driveway of the house right before hers. Sansa leaned over the seat all of a sudden, placing a quick kiss on his cheek, before she hurried out of his car, shut the door behind herself, and ran towards her house like a cat being chased with a water hose.

 

Sandor waited until she was inside before he drove back home, where he promptly set an alarm and went right back to sleep. He had work today, after all, and three hours of sleep was not going to help him survive today after all of the shit that happened to him last night. Eventually, his alarm went off, woke him up again, and Sandor had to get out of bed and get dressed for work. The extra sleep helped out a lot, and Sandor left his apartment to go to the pub. He was working with Allard and Steffon today because it was Asha’s day off, and he could only hope things went more smoothly at the pub today than they did yesterday.

 

The first few hours were a bit slow, but things picked up quickly as it wore on into the evening hours. Sandor worked the backroom while it was still slow, but when things got hectic, he worked behind the bar to help Allard and Steffon with the crowd. He had just served a woman with a drink when an old familiar face stepped through the front door of his pub and walked over to the bar, grinning at Sandor when Sandor looked up and spotted him. Sandor didn’t grin a whole lot himself, but for this guy, he made an exception.

 

“Davos!” Sandor called out, holding his arm out over the bar. Davos laughed at his response, reaching out to clasp Sandor’s hand in a good, firm shake before he took a seat at the bar.

 

“How are my boys doing?” Davos asked him, crossing his arms on the counter and leaning forward on them.

 

“Steffon is working his way through college,” Sandor said, pointing over at Steffon, “but Allard, I don’t know what the fuck he’s doing. You’re going to have to have a talk with him one of these days ‘cause I swear . . . ” Sandor started shaking his head, and Davos laughed yet again, his eyes wrinkling at the corners. “How’s the shipping business going?” Sandor asked him.

 

“Oh, it’s going good,” Davos said, raising his eyebrows. “We’re making a killing lately.”

 

“That’s great,” Sandor said, and all of a sudden, Steffon had appeared out of nowhere behind the bar beside Sandor.

 

“Dad!” Steffon exclaimed, and despite the fact that he was grown man in his early twenties, Steffon leaned over the counter to give Davos a hug. Allard spotted his father from a distance and just gave a wave instead of coming over to say anything.

 

“Hey, Dad!” Allard called out from across the pub, and Davos waved back at him, smiling.

 

“Hey, son,” Davos called back, and he looked back at Sandor. Steffon was already going back to work, so Sandor talked with Davos for a short time before one of their usual regulars walked in through the front door—and drew the attention of every man in the pub, as well as some of the women, with the woman walking beside him. Sandor’s mouth fell open in disbelief, and Davos suddenly turned around to see what had caught Sandor’s eye. His mouth promptly fell open as well, and Tyrion made his way over to the bar to sit beside Davos, grinning at both men.

 

“Hello,” Tyrion said to both of them. “How are things going this wonderfully tremendous and _amazing_ evening?”

 

Sandor was still staring at the woman, though, who had walked in with Tyrion. She didn’t walk all the way up to the bar with the little man. Instead, she had gone off to investigate things in the pub, but she didn’t really touch anything. She mostly just stared at things with this unnervingly sharp gaze. The lady was of average height, but she was shaped like a goddess with a perfect hourglass figure in a shiny silver cocktail dress. Her skin was pale but unearthly beautiful, and her thick, perfectly straight shiny waist length hair was silvery blonde with streaks of gold in it. Her eyes were violet, and she had a gaze built for leveling out entire cities. Although, Sandor was sure her body could do that, too.

 

“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Tyrion said, and when Sandor broke away from looking at the lady to return his gaze to Tyrion, the little man was grinning up at him.

 

“How did _you_ ,” Sandor said pointedly, aiming a finger at the lady across the pub, “get a hold of _that_?”

 

Tyrion’s grin grew wider at Sandor’s question. He leaned forward, held up his hand, and rubbed his fingers together. “Money,” Tyrion said, and then he leaned back from the counter and grabbed his junk, “and a big cock.”

 

“Fuck off,” Sandor said. “How big can it be, as small as you are?”

 

“Do you want to see it?” Tyrion asked, raising his eyebrows and still grinning, and he made a motion like he was going to reach for his waistband.

 

“Fuck, no!” Sandor said loudly, backing away from the counter. “Keep your shit in your pants!”

 

Tyrion laughed at Sandor’s reaction, slapping the counter a few times for good measure. “Ah, she’s a mail order bride, my friend,” he said casually. Tyrion leaned forward on the countertop again and lowered his voice, shielding the side of his mouth with one hand. “She’s foreign,” Tyrion added in a loud whisper, and then he shook his head back and forth as he widened his eyes. “She barely speaks English, but I don’t care. She does this _superb_ Meereenese knot . . . ” Tyrion closed his eyes as if savoring a memory, and he sighed softly. “It makes you forget _all_ of your troubles.”

 

“What’s a ‘Meereenese knot’?” Sandor asked in confusion, crossing his arms over his chest and wrinkling his face up at the phrase.

 

Tyrion bit down on the inside of both of his lips at the same time, making a rumbling three-tiered laugh in the back of his throat. He pointed his finger at Sandor, shaking it as he tried to hold back a grin. “Oh, ho, ho,” Tyrion said, “you don’t know _what_ you’re missing.”

 

“What’s her name?” Davos asked Tyrion. Leave it to Davos, Sandor thought, to ask about her name of all things.

 

“Dahlia . . . no, wait, Dana . . . Daeli . . . Daenas . . . oh, fuck it, I just call her Dany,” Tyrion finished at last, and Sandor shook his head in disbelief. He still couldn’t believe Tyrion had landed someone like her, even if she was a mail order bride that was bought and paid for with a loaded sum of cash. Sandor knew Tyrion was rich, but a buying a mail order bride just seemed like something only a billionaire or a multi-millionaire would do with their money.

 

The lady, Dany was her name according to Tyrion, was making her way over to them now. She walked up to stand beside Tyrion on the opposite side of Davos, and she was glaring straight at Sandor from across the counter. Sandor backed away a step, widening his eyes a little bit.

 

“Uh, Tyrion,” Sandor said quietly, “why is she glaring at me?”

 

All of a sudden, Dany said something jarring and harsh in another language Sandor had never heard before, all the while glaring at him. She narrowed her eyes at Sandor when she was finished, and Sandor thought if her eyes were nukes, he’d be dead instantly with that look she was aiming his way.

 

“Um, give me a second,” Tyrion said, tapping his forehead as if he was trying to remember how to translate whatever it was she said. He must have known at least a fraction of whatever tongue she was speaking. “I think she said . . . you’re really ugly?”

 

“Bullshit,” Sandor called, and Davos started laughing beside them.

 

Dany said something else in her native tongue, this time glaring at Davos. It shut the old man up, too, and he shared a scared look with Sandor. Davos shook his head. “I don’t know what she just said,” Davos said quietly, and Dany started talking really loudly at Tyrion.

 

“Excuse me for one moment,” Tyrion said to both of them, and he slid off the stool and walked Dany over to the door, trying to calm her down while at the same time trying to figure out whatever the hell it was she was saying to him. It was an amusing sight, and Sandor chuckled at it despite himself. Sandor pointed at Tyrion and Dany as they stepped out of the pub, glancing over at Davos.

 

“Now, that’s not some shit you see everyday,” Sandor told Davos, and Davos laughed at that and nodded his head.

 

“It’s definitely _not_ ,” Davos said in agreement, momentarily lifting his eyebrows.

 

Davos ordered a drink at last, decided to stay for a while and mingle, and Sandor served him before going to the back to sort through some of the stock real quick. That was when he heard his phone ringing from his jacket pocket, which was hanging up on the back of the stock room door. Sandor narrowed his eyes at it, wondering who would be calling him while he was at work, and crossed the distance to fish his phone out of his jacket pocket.

 

Once he saw the number on it, he tensed up. This was not the fucking time for this shit. Sandor grasped the top of his head with his hand before taking a deep sigh and accepting the call.

 

“Yeah?” Sandor asked through the phone.

 

“You’ve been ignoring me, love,” Renly said on the other end of the line. There was no deafeningly loud music this time, but there was a reverberating deep bass in the background. Renly must have been in his office at the club. He had it setup to where it was almost soundproof, but the bass still shook through the walls and floor despite that.

 

“I haven’t been ignoring you,” Sandor denied, but that wasn’t entirely true. “I’ve been busy.”

 

“You’ve been busy for two months?” Renly asked, an incredulous tone to his voice, but he didn’t sound aggravated. Not yet, anyway. “It’s been seven weeks since our little meeting, and I haven’t heard from you since. That’s a long time to be busy, Sandor. What have you been doing?”

 

“I’ve been taking care of the pub,” Sandor told him, which wasn’t a complete lie.

 

“You’ve been taking care of the pub,” Renly repeated slowly, “for two months, nonstop, unable to do anything else.”

 

Sandor gritted his teeth, but he couldn’t get mad at Renly. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Sandor could get mad at Renly all he wanted, but he had better keep it to his fucking self. “Things have been crazy around here,” Sandor added, and he was a good liar, so it should have sounded believable enough.

 

“Tonight,” Renly said calmly, “when you get off work, you’re coming straight over to Maegor’s Holdfast.”

 

Last time, it was an offer. It wasn’t an offer this time.

 

This time, it was a demand.

 

Sandor rubbed his hand nervously over his forehead. This was the worst fucking timing possible. Sandor had hoped maybe Renly would have just forgotten about it, moved on, and tried to find someone else, but Sandor was in too deep—and far too indebted to be able to outright refuse. Ignore maybe, which he had been trying to do for some time now, but refusal wasn’t exactly an option if Renly pushed it.

 

“Okay, yeah,” Sandor told him at last. “I’ll be there.”

 

“Loras will come by to pick you up,” Renly said.

 

Sandor gritted his teeth again. “I don’t need a fucking escor—”

 

“ _Loras_ ,” Renly said more firmly this time, cutting Sandor off, “will come by. To pick. You up.”

 

Sandor was quiet for a moment on his end of the line.

 

“Okay,” Sandor finally said between clenched teeth. At his answer, Renly ended the call without another word.

 

Dropping his phone from his ear, Sandor glanced down at it in his hand. His hand was shaking. He clenched his fist over his phone, crushing it between his palm and fingers. He had been trying to get out, trying to start a new life, trying to do something different, and things had been going good for a long time. He had found Elder Brother, cleaned up his act, gave up alcohol, and turned his back on that old life. Sandor was supposed to be a different person now, and he felt like a different person, but it wasn’t going to last if he couldn’t find a way to get out of this. He had to find a way.

 

Sandor went back to work, but he tuned everyone out and went through the motions until it was closing time. He and Allard shut the place down, and Sandor walked out front, closing the door and locking it. When he turned around and looked at the street, he saw Loras leaning against his everyday vehicle instead of his police vehicle. Loras was also dressed up in normal clothing instead of his police uniform, and his arms were crossed over his chest, but there was a small smile on his face. Sandor stuck his hand into his pocket, dropping his keys into it, and made his way over to Loras.

 

“Ready?” Loras called out to Sandor, tilting his head to the side.

 

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Sandor said absentmindedly, and he walked over to the passenger side of Loras’s vehicle. He opened the door, sitting himself down in the passenger seat as Loras got into the vehicle as well.

 

When they shut their doors, the doors both closed together with a resounding _thud_ behind them.

 

 


	27. I’m in Tight with a Demon Called Deception

_* * *_

 

Impatiently, Sandor’s foot tapped against the hard floor below it. The moment they had reached the club, Loras had escorted him up to an empty VIP room, told him to wait here and that he would be back, and then he just left Sandor there. There was a bottle of champagne sitting on ice on the dark blue square table in the center of the room, and Sandor eyed it in annoyance. The thing was Sandor already knew what was going on without having to be told it. He wasn’t a three-year-old child who couldn’t grasp the concept. Sandor had wasted Renly’s time by not answering him for two months, and now Renly was wasting his time by making him wait in an empty VIP room with a bottle of champagne on the table in the center of it to laugh at him. Not only that, but he had Loras escort Sandor here so Sandor couldn’t just get up and leave in his vehicle when he was tired of waiting. However, that couldn’t stop Sandor from calling a cab, but he wasn’t going to do that, even if he wanted to.

 

It had been at least an hour since they arrived at the club. Tired of sitting, Sandor stood up and started pacing around the room. He heard the pounding music beyond the confines of the walls, wishing he could tune it out before it drove him mad. However, while Sandor was pacing the room, the door finally opened and there was Loras standing on the other side of it with a typical boyish smile plastered across his face. The kid smiled way too much, Sandor thought, and it was really starting to get on Sandor’s nerves with this newest turn of events.

 

“He’s ready to see you,” Loras said, and he opened the door wider, stepping back to let Sandor pass through it. Sandor got out of that room as fast as his feet could carry him without looking eager, and Loras closed the door behind him before leading the way down a hallway, up a flight of stairs, and into a darker corridor to the door of Renly’s office. Sandor’s nerves were on edge, shot to shit, as Loras grabbed the door handle and opened it.

 

Renly’s office was large and dark with a tall ceiling, its walls painted a deep navy blue, and black lights hung across each of the walls, decorating the paintings that hung there with a fluorescent glow. Excluding the black lights, which fit the theme of the club, the room would have looked like an executive office with the way it was decorated and set up. Renly’s desk, which sat on the left side of the room from the doorway, looked like an expensive and very detailed antique. Hell, it probably was worth more than everything Sandor owned put together.

 

Renly was sitting at his desk, scribbling something down on a piece of paper when Sandor and Loras walked into the room, and he looked up from his desk and smiled brightly at them both. Renly stood up all of a sudden, tossing his pencil aside haphazardly, and walked around his desk to extend his hand to Sandor. “It’s so good to see you again, Sandor,” Renly said, still smiling happily, and Sandor looked down at his hand before grasping it to shake it. Sandor said nothing, choosing instead to give a curt nod with his head. When he let go, Renly walked back around his desk to sit down once more. When Renly looked up again and saw that Sandor hadn’t taken a seat yet, he gestured at one of the empty chairs in front of his desk. “Please,” Renly said, “have a seat.”

 

Sandor chose the chair closest to the left and sat in it, looking up at Renly from across the desk and waiting for the other man to say something else. After all, he didn’t come here to run his fucking mouth at Renly. Renly called him here to talk to him, and Sandor wasn’t about to amuse the guy with ridiculous fucking conversation and waste more of his precious time. As far as Sandor was concerned, they ought to get down to business and get this over with as soon as possible.

 

Renly picked up his pencil again, scribbled some more in silence, before finally setting it aside and moving the paper out of the way as well. He then leaned back in his seat, propping one elbow upon his armrest and settling his chin upon his forefinger and thumb. He regarded Sandor in silence for a while, and then he finally spoke.

 

“You’ve kept me waiting, Sandor,” Renly began, and he was talking calmly. “For two months, you’ve kept me waiting, and I’m not a very patient man. I don’t enjoy waiting. Not only that, but I have a business to run, and when you keep me waiting, you hold up my business, and when you hold up my business, you make me a very, very unhappy man. I don’t want to be an unhappy man, Sandor. I like being happy. Don’t you like being happy, Sandor?”

 

Sandor had never gotten this speech before because he never kept Renly waiting before, but he had heard of others who had gotten it in the past. Renly was a very powerful and influential man, and good things did not happen to those who crossed him. However, he wasn’t a vicious man or an unreasonable man. Sandor had worked for him for a long time because Renly treated his people with the upmost respect. He was a damn good boss. Sandor had to give him that. Renly also had a strict moral code which was pretty admirable, but Sandor wasn’t about to let that fool him into thinking Renly wasn’t a dangerous man. Men with power were always dangerous men.

 

“Don’t know,” Sandor told him flatly. “I couldn’t say. You’re speaking to the wrong person about happiness.”

 

Renly grinned at that. “You like to play the wounded animal, Sandor,” Renly said. “‘Oh, look at me, the world is a _horrible_ place, oh, the hardships I have endured,’” he teased, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling. “Please, Sandor.” Renly looked back down at Sandor, shaking his head at him. “The act is old. You’ve found God and a tight, young cunt. I’m sure you’re just a bear rolling around in the honey right now, enjoying every lick of it.”

 

Sandor’s fingers clutched tightly onto the armrests, his knuckles turning white from the force of it. That was the thing about Renly. He had a big fucking mouth that talked a lot of shit for someone his size. Sandor took a deep breath to control his anger, and answered Renly’s accusation of making him wait. “You didn’t give me a time frame,” Sandor informed him, his teeth clenching together despite himself.

 

At that, Renly sat up straighter. He dropped his hand from his chin. “Oh,” he said slowly, “I didn’t give you a time frame?” Suddenly, Renly looked over the room at Loras, gesturing his arm wildly at Sandor. “Look at him, Loras, being fucking funny. Ha _ha_.” Renly dropped his arm, glaring across the desk at Sandor. “I didn’t give him a _time_ frame,” Renly repeated, his voice nearly acidic.

 

“You didn’t give him a time frame,” Loras agreed from somewhere further off in the room, though Sandor didn’t turn around to look.

 

Renly pointed viciously towards Loras. “Don’t you fucking start with me,” he shot back.

 

“Lovers’ quarrel?” Sandor asked, the corner of his mouth twitching upward in amusement.

 

Renly turned his glare onto Sandor, but he didn’t answer him. He sat back in his seat calmly, regarding Sandor with a cooler gaze. “You seemed eager enough that first time I spoke with you on the phone,” Renly said. “What changed your mind?”

 

“I don’t see the benefit in it for me,” Sandor answered him plainly. “Amusement, yes, but no benefits. How is it supposed to help me?”

 

Renly looked incredulous. “The man has been dogging your steps for _how_ long, and you don’t see the benefits in this?”

 

Sandor waved his hand dismissively. “It’s just a scandal,” he said. “Who the fuck cares? It’ll be swept under the rug like everything else, and everyone will go on with their lives. No one’s going to fucking care.”

 

“Everyone is going to care,” Renly said softly. “This isn’t just a scandal, Sandor. It’s a lot more complicated than that. If you think my primary focus is uncovering a scandal for gossip readers, then you have sorely misled yourself. The Lannisters have to pay. They’ve had to pay for a long time, and Jaime has given us all of the cannon fodder we need to blast a million holes into their fucking ship and send them sinking into the sea. That is my goal, Sandor. That is what we are aiming for here.”

 

Sandor narrowed his eyes in confusion. “What do you mean, the Lannisters? I thought this was about Jaime Lannister, not the whole lot of them.”

 

Renly laughed loudly, sitting back in his seat. Tapping his fingers against his chin, Renly grinned over the desk at Sandor. “This is about every Lannister, Sandor. Jaime has been up my ass for as long as he’s been up yours, but if you think I’m stopping with him, then you’re dumber than you look. Tywin Lannister has been calling the shots long enough around here. It’s time for a new bigwig in town. We’re playing a game of dominoes with this. You hit one, and suddenly, it hits another and another and another until all of them have fallen down—Tywin Lannister, Kevan Lannister, Tygett Lannister, Jaime Lannister, even that bitch my brother married, Cersei Lannister. I want to see them all fall down.”

 

There was a sinking feeling developing in the pit of Sandor’s stomach. This was a lot deeper than anything he expected to hear tonight. He had thought this was all about getting some payback on Jaime Lannister, an idea that held appeal at first until Sandor had his first face to face meeting with Renly over all of the details. Apparently, Jaime Lannister was a dirty copper before he cleaned up his act and he left his fingers on a lot of fudged evidence and left a trail of paperwork leading right back to him. Not only that, but there was hushed blood test on Jaime’s niece and nephews, proving Robert Baratheon wasn’t their father—but Jaime Lannister was. Given that all of Jaime’s family but him was in politics, getting a hold of the proof on both of those things and releasing any of that information to the public would cause a shockwave through the whole fucking system.

 

If Jaime Lannister had done dirty work for his family, which he had, then that would also tie Tywin, Kevan, and Tygett to him as well. Not only would they lose their positions of power and office, but all of the cases Jaime closed—those would be re-opened and every criminal Jaime put away would be back out on the streets. Was it really wise to fuck all of that up over the desire for power? There might be some innocents tied up in the fray, but Lannister had put away a lot of bad people—and one of them was Sandor’s own brother, Gregor ‘The Mountain’ Clegane, who had been put away for consecutive life sentences in maximum security prison for multiple counts of brutal homicide, infanticide, manslaughter, and rape. Not only that, but Jaime had also caught that fucker Ramsay ‘The Skinner’ Bolton, a serial killer who had a penchant for flaying his victims alive and subjecting them to torture before killing them. Did Renly really want those motherfuckers back out on the streets just to bring the fucking Lannisters down off of their high horses?

 

No, Renly wanted more than that. He wanted to ruin them and steal everything away from them, and then rise up from the ashes and claim it all for himself. Renly was a powerful man, but he was no Tywin Lannister. However, Renly didn’t understand the far-reaching consequences of his plan in the same way that Sandor understood them. Renly saw the benefits and not the consequences, and while taking Jaime Lannister down a few pegs held a great appeal to Sandor, nothing else about Renly’s plan appealed to him. The very idea of letting that fucking monster of a brother of his back out onto the streets was enough to make him see red. There was no way he would agree to do anything that resulted in that.

 

“If you want power so bad, why don’t you become a politician?” Sandor asked Renly with a derisive tone, staring at him from across the desk. He was trying very hard to keep his cool by this point, especially given his true thoughts on this entire plan.

 

The grin was gone from Renly’s lips before Sandor spoke, but a small smile appeared on his face in place of it. “You’re a fool if you think politicians have the power. Power isn’t about which desk you sit behind, Sandor. Look at me. I sit behind a desk in a nightclub, and no one fucks with me,” Renly told him. He slowly pointed his forefinger at Sandor, lifting his eyebrows for emphasis. “You wouldn’t fuck with me, Sandor.”

 

“No, I don’t swing that way,” Sandor said, shaking his head.

 

Renly started shaking his pointed finger at Sandor, his smile turning into a grin once more. He looked back across the room at Loras. “He’s a funny man, Loras.”

 

“That he is,” Loras agreed.

 

Renly looked back at Sandor. “I like funny men,” Renly said. “Funny men make me laugh, and laughing makes me happy, and I like being happy.”

 

Sandor found himself shaking his head again. He had to try and find some way to reason with Renly about how bad a fucking idea this whole thing was without bringing out the Baratheon boy’s wrath. All three of them, Renly and Robert and Stannis, were well known for their ridiculous fits of anger. Sandor had never personally met Robert or Stannis, so he didn’t know them like he knew Renly, but he knew of their reputations. “Wouldn’t your plan defeat its purpose and hurt your brother, too?” Sandor asked him. “Robert is married to Cersei. Reveal the scandal involving those children, and Robert goes down with it.”

 

“No, he won’t go down with it,” Renly disagreed. “He’ll be the victim, the wounded animal, and people will love it. They’ll eat it up. It’ll get him reelected. I can see the papers now. Their divorce will be splashed over every newspaper and magazine across Kingsland. The scandal will ruin her and boost his popularity. Not that I particularly care about that, though,” Renly added dismissively. “Robert is joke, a drunken fool. Stannis is an even bigger joke. I am the only one with any fucking sense among them.”

 

“But still, Robert—” Sandor tried to reason.

 

“Robert can go fuck himself,” Renly said with a fiery gleam in his eyes, and there was the first true flicker of his temper shining through his normally warm eyes. “He only married that bitch for her father’s money and influence. How many bastards does he have running around town? Fourteen, fifteen, or was it sixteen?”

 

“Sixteen,” Loras answered from across the room, and Sandor finally turned around to look and see what Loras was up to over there. He saw Loras at another table, sorting through a stack of papers. Sandor narrowed his eyes, wondering what those papers had on them, but he turned back to face Renly.

 

“Sixteen fucking bastards,” Renly repeated slowly. “Sixteen, Sandor.” Renly looked over at Loras again. “How long have we been together, Loras?”

 

“Ten years,” Loras answered him, and Sandor heard him put down whatever was in his hands. Loras was crossing the room over to them.

 

“Ten years,” Renly repeated again, softer this time. His voice was filled with fondness. “Ten years, Sandor,” Renly said, looking across the desk at him again. “Ten fucking years, and my brother can’t keep his prick in his pants for ten _minutes_.”

 

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Sandor asked gruffly as Loras came up to Renly’s side and stood there, putting his hand on Renly’s shoulder and looking at Sandor along with the other man. One interrogating gaze was enough, Sandor thought, but now he had both of their eyes on him and that was unnerving.

 

Renly laughed at Sandor’s question before he calmed down and aimed a harder gaze onto Sandor despite the smile that lingered on his face. “Now you’re just trying to avoid giving me an answer,” Renly said. “I want an answer, Sandor. I want to know if you are in or if you are out.”

 

“I have an option?” Sandor asked, incredulous, as if he already knew the answer to that, and a part of him did.

 

Renly was quiet at first, staring at Sandor. Loras was rubbing his hand on Renly’s shoulder, but Renly’s gaze was turning darker despite it. “Do you have an option?” Renly asked out loud, though it was a rhetorical question. “I never expected you to say that,” he added.

 

“You just expected me to say yes,” Sandor said flatly.

 

The fire came back to Renly’s eyes, his shoulders tensing up, and he sat up straighter in his chair. “What?” Renly asked sharply, his voice dripping acid. “Are you a Lannister dog now?”

 

Sandor scowled at that. “I’m nobody’s dog but my own,” he said.

 

“No,” Renly cut off, his voice terse and angry, “you’re _my_ dog, and you do as _I_ say.”

 

“Fuck you, Renly,” Sandor shot back in his gruff voice. Even though he knew that was a stupid fucking move, he couldn’t stop himself from saying it.

 

Renly shot up from his chair, boiling over at this point. His face looked like a nuclear reactor on the brink of a meltdown, his skin turning red and his eyes gleaming with fury. “What did you say to me, Sandor?” Renly asked, raising his voice. “What the _fuck_ did you say to me?”

 

Loras had grabbed Renly by the shoulders as he stood beside him, and where Renly was losing his cool, Loras had his full composure. “Renly, calm down—” he tried to assuage the other man, but Renly tried to shake Loras off of his shoulders, and then he leaned forward and slammed one of his fists down on the desk.

 

“I _am_ fucking calm!” Renly shouted, the resounding _thump_ of his fist colliding with the desk filling the room.

 

“Renly!” Loras said louder, and he gripped Renly tight by the shoulders. Loras raised one hand to Renly’s head, stroking the other man’s hair. “Calm down,” Loras said softly. Renly was breathing hard, leaning over his desk. Finally, he dropped his head. Loras was still tenderly running his hand through his hair, his other hand resting gently on Renly’s shoulder. “You need to calm down, babe,” Loras whispered to him.

 

Sandor averted his eyes. He didn’t have a problem with them two doing whatever they did with each other, but watching them be this physical with each other right in front of him was uncomfortable for Sandor. Eventually, Loras managed to calm Renly down all the way, and Renly cleared his throat from the desk. Sandor finally looked up again, and Loras was still rubbing Renly’s shoulder, but that was it. Renly ran a hand over his forehead, looking like a man who just woke up from sleep.

 

Renly sat himself back down in his chair, and then he looked up at Loras. “Can you bring me a drink, babe?” Renly asked him softly, and Loras nodded his head.

 

“I’ll be right back,” Loras told him, and he leaned forward to kiss Renly on the forehead before he headed for the door and exited the office, leaving Renly and Sandor alone together.

 

Sandor should have kept his mouth shut, but he was never very good at that anyway. “You Baratheon boys and your tempers,” he said.

 

Renly calmly looked up at Sandor, but his gaze was piercing. “I’m going to let that slide,” Renly said, “because you have served me for a long time, Sandor, and you have served me well. Better than well, actually. You were always one of the best. You know that, don’t you? Whenever I had to call on someone for a job, you got things done. Your only problem was your drinking. You drank, and you got yourself into trouble outside of work, but then when you couldn’t get a hold of a bottle while working and shit was getting tough, well . . . that’s where things went downhill for you. But I overlooked it because you were so damn good to me, Sandor.”

 

“What’s your point?” Sandor asked him, though he had a feeling he knew where this was going in the end.

 

“My point is,” Renly continued slowly, crossing his arms and resting them upon his desk, and then he leaned forward on them, “I came to you for a reason. You don’t drink anymore, so maybe that’s a good thing. It’ll keep your head clearer for what I need done—but that’s not the reason. The reason is I know I can _trust_ you, Sandor. You’re loyal, you’re dedicated, and you follow orders. You went to prison, keeping your mouth shut. They offered you a big, fat deal to turn in your superiors, and you shouldered the blame and the crimes on yourself. Now, that’s what I call dedication and loyalty, Sandor. It takes a big man to do that, you know. I came to _you_ for that reason. If the wrong people get even a whiff of what we’re doing and lock up the evidence where it’ll never see the light of day, then the whole operation is fucked and we’ll never get a hold of it—but I can trust you, Sandor. I can trust that no one will hear a word of it from your lips.”

 

Renly was being calm with him, and there were no threats in this proposal, so Sandor saw no reason why he couldn’t stay calm as well. “What if I don’t want to do it?” Sandor asked this time because it was the truth, and he didn’t want to do it.

 

Renly sat back in his seat again, propping an arm on the armrest. His dark eyes regarded Sandor with interest. “I think you will,” Renly said softly, “because the payday I’ll offer for this job will be enough for you to buy three more pubs and a nice villa by the riviera to live in, if you want it, and you’d still have cash left over to blow on whatever you wanted for yourself. You’ll be rich, Sandor. No more worries ‘til the end of your days.” Renly smiled kindly at Sandor, tilting his head to the side. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? It would impress the ladies, for sure. Nothing speaks to women like power and money.”

 

“I don’t need to impress the ladies,” Sandor answered him sardonically.

 

Renly shrugged at that. “Then, do it for the money. Set yourself up for life, and just enjoy it. What more of a reason do you need, Sandor?”

 

Sandor didn’t know what to say after that, so he lapsed into silence. Loras still hadn’t returned yet with Renly’s drink, but it was a long walk through the crowd of bodies below. Jaime Lannister used to be a dirty copper before he became the golden boy, but in a way, Loras was very much the same thing as what Jaime Lannister used to be. It was a different kind of double agency, though. There had been no method to the madness of Lannister’s actions because he had done what he wanted as well as what he had been told to do without question, but Loras was careful and precise about every little thing he did. It was a Tyrell trait, being careful and precise. They had a way of weeding their way into everything, like the roots of a plant working its way through stone if it had the patience, and the Tyrells had all of the patience in the world.

 

The door to the office opened again, and it was Loras, returning with Renly’s drink. He handed it to Renly, and Renly accepted it, but then he lifted up from his chair to give Loras a kiss. “Thank you, babe,” Renly said, and Loras touched Renly’s shoulder again before moving to sit down on the edge of the desk and looking over at Sandor. Renly took a sip of his drink, made a pleasurable sound in the back of his throat, closed his eyes, and shook his head. “Oh, that’s good,” Renly said, and then he put his glass down on his desk and made sure it wasn’t touching the wood.

 

“Have we sorted everything out?” Loras asked, turning his gaze from Sandor to Renly, and Renly looked up at Sandor. Renly was quiet for a moment. He tapped his fingers against his desk, biting on the inside of his lips and looking thoughtful.

 

“We don’t have to get this done immediately,” Renly finally said, “but I need this done before elections. That gives us a couple of months. I will give you some more time to think it over, Sandor. Consider it a blessing in despite of your behavior this evening, and a testimony to how much I like you. Loras, would you mind escorting Sandor back to his pub and to his car so he may drive home? I am sure he is tired now, and sleep must be the first thing on his mind.”

 

Loras nodded his head and slid off the edge of the desk, walking over to the door of Renly’s office, opening it up, and waiting on Sandor to follow him. Sandor stared across the desk at Renly for a few seconds longer before curtly nodding his head and getting up from his chair. He walked over to the door when Renly called out to him.

 

“Oh, and Sandor?” Renly asked, and Sandor stopped, turning around to look.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Don’t ignore my calls anymore,” Renly told him, and despite the calmness of his voice, Sandor knew there was a warning laced somewhere in the words.

 

He turned his back to Renly and walked out of the office. Sandor heard Loras close the door, but Sandor led the way down and through the club while Loras followed him. It wasn’t like Sandor didn’t know the fucking way out of here. He knew this place like the back of his hand. The swarm of bodies below seemed thicker than usual, and Sandor had a hell of a time getting through them to the other side, but he and Loras eventually made it out and to the forefront of the club.

 

Sandor passed through the front doors into the cool night air, which struck his face and woke him up despite the mild sensation of exhaustion that hung over his mind. He stood there in silence, looking up at the night sky and wondering if this was some kind of test. He had never been a man of faith, and he still didn’t consider himself one despite the advice and help of Elder Brother in his life, but the older man opened Sandor’s eyes to a lot of things he had never seen before, never realized, never understood about fucking life and purpose and everything else abstract and intangible.

 

Was he being tested, though, and who was testing him, if that was so? Was he supposed to say no, or was he supposed to say yes? And if he said no, what exactly would Renly do in response to that? Sandor had never actually pissed the man off before, not truly anyway, and he couldn’t remember any direct instances of people who had managed to piss Renly off either. Renly was a well-loved individual by the people who worked for him and even by people who didn’t work for him. That man could attract a crowd with just his smile alone. People really didn’t try to piss off Renly on purpose. Mostly, they tried their damnedest to make him happy.

 

Sandor felt a hand on his shoulder, and he broke his reverie from the sky to look down and see who had put it there. Loras was standing beside him, his hand on Sandor’s shoulder, and there was a mild look of concern on his face. Given what had transpired back in Renly’s office, it was disconcerting to see that look on Loras’s face. Sandor never genuinely thought of Loras as a friend, but he had told Sansa Loras was a friend, and in a way, the two of them went back a ways. They had gotten pissed together on a couple of occasions back when Sandor still drank alcohol, and Loras wasn’t such a bad guy when shit came down to it. The little fucker could hold his liquor, too.

 

Loras took his hand off Sandor’s shoulder, careful not to let it linger there too long and make Sandor uncomfortable. “Come on,” Loras told him kindly. “Let’s get you back.” Loras made a gesture with his head for Sandor to follow him, and then the younger man started walking off down the sidewalk towards his vehicle parked on the curb.

 

Sandor glanced up once more at the sky. He almost expected to hear a fucking answer to all of his goddamn questions, but there was nothing at all. Nothing but silence. He didn’t believe in God, so he didn’t find it funny how there was nothing but silence to answer him. Sandor looked away from the sky, turning his gaze forward once more.

 

Sandor followed Loras back to the car, and he sat in silence during the whole ride back to his pub.

 

 


	28. Brother, Nothing Here is Any Good

_* * *_

 

The ride back to the pub was an uncomfortable affair. Sandor brooded in the seat next to Loras, remaining silent the whole time. Loras wanted to say something, but at the same time, he knew that maybe that wasn’t the best of ideas just yet. He wanted to give Sandor some time to himself while he drove, and maybe once they got to the pub Loras could talk to him about everything. Renly had gotten pretty carried away at the club, and Loras knew with his temper that Renly had the possibility of running Sandor off, but they needed Sandor for this. If they expected it to get done proper, then they needed Sandor for this, even Loras could see that.

 

Loras drove safely through the empty streets, obeying all of the traffic laws despite the fact that no one was out this late. Loras might have been a police officer, but he didn’t abuse his power at every twist and turn that became available to him. He mostly did it when it was required of him or if Renly needed something done, and those were the only instances. Every red light, stop sign, yield sign, and speed limit sign, Loras followed them all until Sandor’s familiar pub showed up on the street ahead of them. Loras pulled the vehicle into the parking lot and parked it.

 

Sandor immediately opened the door and got out of the car, and Loras followed suit and did the same thing. Sandor stopped when he noticed Loras getting out of the car, turning around to aim a hardened gaze at Loras. Despite Loras’s kindness outside of the club, Sandor didn’t seem to trust him very much because of Renly’s attitude and actions. Loras couldn’t really blame Sandor, though, but to be honest, that shit hurt. Loras always had respect for Sandor, and he had considered him a friend for a long time. The guy was rough, but he wasn’t a bad guy despite what a lot of people thought about him. Sandor could be pretty damn funny when he wanted to be, and he was a trustworthy man on top of that. They had hung out a lot in the past, but every since Sandor sobered up and found God, he had changed his tune and Loras hadn’t seen him since until recently.

 

For a while, they just stared at each other in silence. When Loras had gotten out of the car, it caused Sandor to freeze and the man hadn’t unfrozen himself yet or made any attempts to speak. Loras figured Sandor was probably waiting on him to say something. After all, he had gotten out of the vehicle like he wanted to say something else to Sandor, and he did. Loras had a lot to say.

 

“You know,” Loras finally said, cutting into the unpleasant silence surrounding them, “Renly was only acting like that because you upset him, Sandor. You’ve never upset him before.”

 

Sandor’s face twisted into a harsh scowl over those words, and for a moment it looked like he was going to spit on the ground, but he didn’t. “Because Renly is a spoiled fucking brat who gets everything he wants?” Sandor asked him in a cold and callous voice.

 

Loras narrowed his eyes. “No, you know that’s not true—”

 

Sandor barked out a laugh at that, turning his head away from Loras. “No, it’s fucking true. Renly is a spoiled fucking brat, and no one tells him ‘no.’”

 

Loras was upset, and he felt his own face twisting into an unpleasant look and betraying him. Sandor wasn’t being reasonable here, and Loras couldn’t help it. He felt everything coming out at once. “You know, we go way back, Sandor,” Loras said, his voice unsteady. “You and me and Renly, we all go way back. Anything you’ve _ever_ needed of us, we’ve given it to you. Whenever you needed help, we’ve been there to _offer_ it to you. Who else has done that for you, Sandor? Can you tell me? Who _else_?”

 

Sandor was quiet at that, but the scowl didn’t leave his face. He wasn’t looking at Loras now, and Loras glanced down and saw that Sandor was clenching his fists at his sides. Sandor wasn’t saying anything because he knew it was true. They had done so much for him, and Sandor was acting like they had never been friends to him, had never been like fucking family to him, and had never given two shits about what had happened to him. Sure, Sandor had worked for Renly, and they all had a business relationship together, but Renly and Loras had gotten Sandor out of so much shit that it wasn’t even funny anymore. It had been hilarious at first, but it wasn’t any longer.

 

“You act like we haven’t done _anything_ for you,” Loras shot at him, continuing on with his diatribe, “but how many times have I helped you, Sandor? How many times have I gotten you out of sticky situations with the law? How many more times would you have been locked up if it wasn’t for me butting in to save _your_ skin? That last big time when you got in trouble, and you got probation for it?” Loras hoped Sandor hadn’t forgotten about that instance, and he pointed his finger at Sandor for emphasis. “Do you remember that? Do you remember who was responsible for that, Sandor? _Renly_ was responsible for that. Do you know how hard it was for him to pull those strings? Do you know how high up the chain of command Renly had to go to get you probation? The courts wanted to put you away for twenty years, Sandor. Twenty fucking years, and Renly got you _probation_.”

 

Sandor wasn’t clenching his fists anymore, so Loras thought maybe he was finally getting through to the other man. He could only hope his words had some kind of impact on Sandor because it wasn’t fair how Sandor acted like none of this stuff had happened when it had, and Loras just wanted to hear the other man admit it out loud. It wasn’t like they were asking the world of him. One last job, and no one even had to get physically hurt if it was at all possible, and Sandor was acting like they had just asked him to jump off of a thirty-story building and plummet to the ground below.

 

“We’re _friends_ , Sandor,” Loras finished, his voice softening up a bit, “and now you’re acting all high and mighty and too good for us because you’ve found God. Do you know what utter bullshit that is? We have helped you so much, and now all we need is your help.”

 

“To get rid of Lannisters?” Sandor asked bitterly, turning to meet Loras’s gaze again. Finally, he had spoken again, but he still didn’t sound any more open to the idea than he had at the club. Loras wanted to frown, but instead he shook his head in response.

 

“No,” Loras said softly, “not to get rid of them. To make their world crumble down around their feet. They deserve it, you know. They all deserve it. They’re liars and thieves and scoundrels, every last one of them, and they’ve been controlling this city for long enough, like Renly said. Why let them call the shots any longer? Why give them all of the power? It’s bullshit, Sandor. Your brother, you know, he worked for Tywin Lannister. That _monster_ worked for him.”

 

“I know that,” Sandor answered him, and this time he was speaking more calmly as if most of the fight had gone out of him. Good, Loras thought, this was some kind of progress.

 

“Do you think anybody who has someone like your brother, Gregor Clegane, work for them is a good fucking person?”

 

Sandor turned to glare at Loras again. “You’re really going to ask me a question like that?”

 

“Renly may not be clean, and I may not be either, and neither are you, but none of us are Tywin Lannister,” Loras told him.

 

Sandor snorted at that. “No,” he said, “none of us are Tywin Lannister.”

 

“And none of us are Gregor Clegane either,” Loras added pointedly. “You know that, too.”

 

Sandor looked up at the sky, sighing deeply. “Yes, I know that.”

 

“Tell me you’ll think about it, then,” Loras asked him. “Tell me you won’t act like none of this matters or that tomorrow you’re going to forget all about us.”

 

“I can’t make any promises, Loras,” Sandor said, glancing over at him. “I don’t make promises. You know that.”

 

Loras bit the inside of his cheek. “Yeah, I know that,” he said, echoing Sandor’s earlier words.

 

“Look, I’ve got to get home,” Sandor said abruptly, fishing his keys out of his jacket pocket. He started walking to his vehicle without another word. Loras wanted to say goodbye, but he decided against it. Sandor was going to be tough about this, and Loras didn’t want to look weak in front of Sandor. He also didn’t want to give Sandor the upper hand in the situation and make himself and Renly look disadvantaged without Sandor’s help, even though they needed it. He wasn’t trying to guilt trip the man earlier either. Loras was only trying to remind Sandor of the truth. They had done a lot for him, and Sandor wanted to pretend like none of it had ever happened despite the harsh reality that spoke of the opposite.

 

Loras watched as Sandor cranked his car and drove off, and then he got into his own vehicle and drove back to the club. He made his way through the swarm of dancing bodies that were still here in despite of the late hour, taking the familiar route back to Renly’s office. When he opened the door and walked inside, Loras saw Renly still sitting at his desk, pouring over some of the papers Loras had been looking at earlier while Renly and Sandor had their little meeting.

 

Renly looked up at Loras’s arrival, smiling gently at him. Renly liked to put on a show for others, but here when it was just the two of them, Renly had a soft side that came out just for Loras. Renly stood up from his desk as Loras walked over to him, and they embraced for a moment as Renly gave Loras a warm and welcoming kiss. When Loras pulled back to look at Renly, the corner of Renly’s mouth twitched upward slightly, and then Renly made a move to sit down again.

 

“How did the ride go?” Renly asked kindly, and he picked up one of the papers on his desk, staring intently at it.

 

“It went okay,” Loras said in a nonchalant manner, shrugging his shoulders. He took a seat on the edge of Renly’s desk.

 

“Do you think he will say yes?” Renly asked next.

 

“It’s hard to say,” Loras answered him. “Sandor is a hard book to read, you know. Half of the time, I have no idea what the hell he is thinking.”

 

Renly was quiet for a little while, and then he put down the piece of paper in his hands. He had a dark and thoughtful look pass over his face, and he brought up his hand to rub his chin. “He is still seeing that Stark girl, isn’t he?”

 

Loras was confused at that, and he lifted his brow. “I think so,” he said.

 

Renly was quiet again. “I want to speak with her,” Renly suddenly said then, and a foreboding feeling gripped at Loras’s heart. He started to shake his head at Renly, feeling his whole body tense up.

 

“No,” Loras said quickly, “don’t drag her into this. She’s an innocent girl, Renly—”

 

Renly cut his eyes at Loras. “Who said I was going to drag her into this?” he asked. “I said I wanted to talk to her. Is there something wrong with that? What, I can’t talk to her without it being about something bad?”

 

Loras felt his face harden at Renly’s words. Renly was acting like Loras was stupid and he couldn’t see through what Renly was saying, but Loras knew _exactly_ what Renly was saying. He had known Renly long enough to know what was going on through his head, even when Renly wouldn’t outright say it in the clearest words possible.

 

“Don’t act like I’m stupid,” Loras said, getting off of Renly’s desk. “You want to talk to her because you want to use her against Sandor as leverage—”

 

“Don’t be fucking ridiculous,” Renly said, cutting him off. “What kind of a person do you think I am, Loras? Do I look like a monster?”

 

“I didn’t say you were going to hurt her,” Loras snapped, “but you can use someone as leverage without hurting them. Don’t do this, Renly. Don’t you drag her into this.” Loras was shaking his head again, and he felt himself shaking all over his body as well. Sometimes there were things Renly did that Loras didn’t agree with at all, and this was one of those things. Sansa Stark was just a girl, and she hadn’t done anything to deserve being pulled into this all because Sandor had a bug up his ass.

 

If Renly thought Loras was just going to stand by and let him do this, then he was sorely mistaken.

 

Renly put both hands down on his desk, looking up at Loras. “I’m not going to hurt her,” he said firmly, “but she’s useful to us. Admit it, Loras. She’s useful.”

 

“I’m not _going_ to admit it,” Loras shot back, “because it’s _wrong_.”

 

“We do wrong stuff everyday, Loras,” Renly said, shaking his head. “This isn’t anything new.”

 

“She’s just a _girl_ , Renly—”

 

“She’s Sandor Clegane’s fucking play toy,” Renly threw back at him. “She’s fucking _useful_.”

 

“This is fucking _wrong_ , Renly—”

 

“This discussion is over, Loras,” Renly said suddenly, turning away from Loras. Loras gaped at him, unable to believe his ears.

 

“Are you serious?” Loras asked quietly.

 

“I’m deadly serious,” Renly told him without looking at him again.

 

Loras took a deep breath, his chest rattling with the motion. “Fine,” Loras snapped, pointing at Renly, “when this shit comes down on _your_ head, don’t ask me to fucking help you clean it up.”

 

Loras stormed out of Renly’s office, slamming the door behind himself.

 

 


	29. I Got Nothing, No Magic Words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Book references. Book references, everywhere.

_* * *_

 

The morning when Sansa had gotten back to her house after spending the night at Sandor’s apartment, she had been lucky enough to arrive home early enough in the morning that nobody had woken up yet. She had immediately rushed into the bathroom, washed up under the hot spray of a nice, long shower, and then she had spent probably thirty minutes staring at herself in the mirror and agonizing over the bruise marks on her neck and just how she was going to cover those up from prying eyes. Sansa had known she couldn’t just walk around the house with her neck out in the open, flashing the bruises off for everybody to see. Her parents would have asked questions, her brothers would have stared in horror, and if she had left the house without hiding them, people were going to talk about her.

 

Sansa’s hand had passed over the marks as she gazed at them, remembering how she had gotten them, and a blush had crept upon her cheeks as she replayed the events in Sandor’s apartment over in her head. When she had given herself time to process all of it afterwards, Sansa thought she kind of liked it. Yes, it was rough, but it had been exciting, too. Her body had reacted pleasantly enough to all of it. It had been her mind that had the problem with it, but Sansa wondered if that wasn’t because Sandor didn’t _tell_ her what he was going to do—he just _did_ it without asking her or telling her—and some kind of warning might have prepared her for what he was going to do, and then she wouldn’t have gotten so upset or scared over his actions. Maybe next time when she saw him she would have to tell him about that, so if Sandor wanted to do it again, maybe they could do it again without him scaring her half to death over it.

 

However, when it came down to the matter of covering up the bruises, Sansa had found a way to hide them so nobody would see them. She had wrapped a thin scarf around her neck, even though it was summertime. Sansa had a few sheer fabric scarves lying around her bedroom, and they wouldn’t be unbearable to wear in this summer heat, so she could wear them and just look fashionable for a few days until the bruises faded away. They weren’t that dark, so Sansa didn’t think she would have to worry about having them for too long. Nobody asked her any questions about her scarf on the first day. On the second day, however, her mother commented on how pretty it looked over breakfast. Sansa smiled brightly at Catelyn, thanking her mother for the compliment, and then her father even said he liked her scarf, too. _Perfect_ , Sansa thought, and she beamed at them.

 

Sansa decided today that she was going to spend some time with Margaery for once. It had been a while since she had hung out with her, and Sansa kind of missed Margaery. Not only that, but Margaery had helped Sansa out of a very troublesome situation with her parents when she had gotten drunk at Maegor’s Holdfast, and Sansa hadn’t even properly thanked Margaery for that yet, which was horrible. Sansa never forgot to thank people for the nice things they did for her, and here she was, lapsing on a thanks she owed to Margaery. Sansa picked up her phone and called her, asked her if she wanted to spend some time together today, and Margaery ecstatically said yes through the phone. Margaery said she would be there in a few to pick Sansa up.

 

Margaery drove up as Sansa was waiting in the living room, and at the sound of an approaching car, Sansa rushed out of the front door. She happily got into the other girl’s car, and they talked frivolously about their week so far. Once they reached the house, though, Margaery led Sansa up to her room, closed the door, locked it, and turned to look at Sansa with her hands still on the door behind her. Margaery’s lips were pursed in that inquisitive and charming way of hers, her blue eyes shining with mischief, and she pushed herself off of the door and walked over to Sansa. Margaery took Sansa by the hands and led her over to her bed. Margaery sat down, and Sansa sat down with her, but Sansa was beginning to wonder just what was on Margaery’s mind because she had a look on her face like _something_ was definitely on her mind and she was just dying to ask it.

 

“So,” Margaery said softly, looking Sansa directly in the eyes with her piercing bright blue gaze, “what happened between you and Sandor _Clegane_?”

 

Sansa’s eyes grew as big as saucers in her utter shock. Sansa had never told Margaery his name, so the only thing she could figure was that Loras must have told Margaery, which brought a whole new sinking fear into Sansa’s heart. Exactly how much did Margaery know about that night at Maegor’s Holdfast and the day after when Loras had come by Sandor’s apartment? How much did Loras tell Margaery? Had he told her everything? Margaery knew Sandor’s whole name, so somebody told her _something_ , and they told her a _lot_ of it.

 

“What do you mean?” Sansa asked, her mouth unable to close itself, so it just sort of hung open in continued shock despite the fact that she had already finished talking.

 

Margaery rolled her eyes, but her lips were still pursed in that quirky little smirk of hers. She met Sansa’s eyes again, her smirk turning into a full-blown grin. “Come now, Sansa,” Margaery said, “we’re both girls here, and we can talk about these things.” Margaery leaned in closer to Sansa’s face, lowering her voice this time. Her eyes were glittering with mischief. “How big is he?”

 

If her jaw unhinged itself any further, Sansa was afraid it was going to fall straight off and hit Margaery’s bed. “What?” Sansa repeated, sounding like a parrot with the way she was repeating herself, but she couldn’t help it. Nothing else would come out of her mouth.

 

Margaery rolled her eyes again before meeting Sansa’s gaze once more. “You _know_ ,” she urged, no longer beating around the bush about it, “his cock. How big is it?”

 

Sansa’s look of shock turned into a look of horror. “Oh my god, I don’t know!” she exclaimed. “I haven’t seen it!”

 

Margaery grinned wide at Sansa’s response, her pearly white teeth shining. “Oh, come now, didn’t you at least _touch_ it first?”

 

“No!” Sansa exclaimed yet again. “I haven’t touched it!”

 

Margaery’s grin promptly faded from her face, and now she was the one looking shocked instead of Sansa. “Oh, wow,” Margaery said then. “He’s a rough fellow, isn’t he? No foreplay at all?”

 

“Oh my _god_ , Margaery,” Sansa enunciated, and this time she rolled her eyes instead of Margaery rolling hers, “ _nothing_ happened.”

 

Now it was Margaery’s turn for her eyes to grow as big as saucers and her jaw to fall open in disbelief. “What?” Margaery asked in astonishment, echoing Sansa’s question from earlier. Margaery narrowed her eyes next, her forehead wrinkling with the motion. “What do you mean ‘nothing happened’?” she questioned further, sounding completely cynical about the idea. “You got drunk at the club, and then you spent the night at a man’s _house_ with him, and you’re telling me nothing happened?”

 

“Yes,” Sansa said in a despondent voice, “I’m telling you nothing happened.” Sansa didn’t know of anything in particular she could say to Margaery to convince her of the truth. Either Margaery was going to believe her or she wasn’t going to believe her. It wasn’t like Sansa could prove or disprove whatever had happened that night. She hadn’t set up a video camera and _recorded_ it. “He’s not like that,” Sansa told her softly. “He put me down on his couch, put a blanket over me, and then he walked away . . . ” She found her voice trailing off, realizing how silly it sounded when she said it out loud. After all, how many men did that in this day and age if they had a young, drunk girl in their arms? Not very many, from all of the horror stories Sansa had heard happening at clubs and parties.

 

Margaery gasped suddenly. “Is he _gay_?” she asked. “Like Loras? Those two have always been a bit chummy—”

 

“Oh my god, he’s not gay!” Sansa shouted at her, and then she immediately felt bad for shouting at Margaery because Margaery sat back on her bed away from Sansa, a hurt expression blooming over her face because of Sansa’s sharp tone. Sansa brought her hands to her mouth to cover it up, regretting her actions, and dropped them back down to her lap when she was ready to speak again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to yell, Margaery, but he’s not gay. We’ve been seeing each other for a while now—in secret.”

 

However, there was something that Margaery had said which caught Sansa’s attention, and that was Sandor and Loras having always been ‘a bit chummy.’ Sansa remembered Sandor saying Loras was a friend, but Sansa had known Margaery for years, and through her she kind of knew Loras for a few years as well, but she had never met or heard of Sandor before she walked into his pub. It was sort of strange to her. How was Loras friends with Sandor for so long, but Sansa had never seen Loras ever hanging out with Sandor or ever heard Loras mention Sandor’s name before?

 

Margaery, though, had her attention on something completely different than Sansa. “You’ve been seeing him in secret?” Margaery asked quietly, as if someone would hear them if they spoke any louder. “As in you haven’t told your parents about him?”

 

Sansa nodded her head. “Right,” she agreed, but then she asked Margaery about Loras and Sandor. “What do you mean by they’ve always been ‘a bit chummy’?”

 

Margaery smirked at that, rolling her eyes upward. “Well,” she said, lowering her eyes to Sansa again, “Loras has known Sandor _forever_. They used to go out drinking with other friends of theirs all the time. Renly was there a lot, too. Part of me always wondered if he was gay, though. He never had a girlfriend from what Loras said, but Loras said he was into girls and he messed around with them from time to time, so I don’t know if he was just the one-night stand type or what—which is _why_ I thought something happened between the two of you when he carried you off to his place that night you got drunk at Maegor’s and Loras called me and told me about it the next day.” Margaery gave Sansa a pointed look when she was finished as if to tell Sansa her thoughts hadn’t been completely unfounded on nonsense.

 

Margaery’s words spiked an ache inside of Sansa’s chest, though, and it took Sansa a moment to realize that the ache was jealousy—and some kind of hurt over not hearing this from Sandor first. Sansa swallowed nervously, folding her arms over her chest. She knew she shouldn’t have asked the next question that came out of her mouth, but she did it anyway. Half of it was out of curiosity, and the other half of it was out of fear, and maybe she should have just waited and asked Sandor first, but Sansa’s curiosity was too strong to let her wait until she spoke with him again and found the courage to ask. “What else do you know about Sandor?” Sansa inquired in a whisper, and the very words seemed to make a sudden sense of dread fall over her heart.

 

The intensity of Margaery’s gaze seemed to increase upon hearing that query, and she leaned forward towards Sansa again, biting on her bottom lip. “Do you really want to know?” Margaery asked her, and Sansa’s heart rate sped up as the feeling of ache and dread grew heavier on her heart.

 

Sansa wordlessly nodded her head.

 

Margaery leaned back, then, placing both of her palms against the bed to either side of herself. “He hasn’t told you a whole lot about his past, has he?” Margaery pushed further, and Sansa shook her head at the question.

 

“No,” Sansa admitted out loud, her voice sounding very far away to her own ears. Sandor had never talked about his past aside from telling her he _had_ one, and that didn’t really count. Margaery slowly nodded her head at Sansa’s answer, and she almost looked like she didn’t want to say anything, but Margaery’s desire for talking outweighed any other feeling she had warring against it because she opened her mouth to tell Sansa everything she knew of Sandor—which she had learned from Loras, Sansa presumed.

 

“Well,” Margaery began slowly, “he was a very violent fellow. I don’t know if he still is now. There was this one time Loras was with Sandor and some other guys when this man made some nasty joke about Sandor’s—” Here, Margaery brought her hand up to the left side of her face. “—Scars, and Sandor nearly _killed_ the guy over it. It took four men to overpower him, and Loras wasn’t one of them. He had _really_ bad anger issues from what I heard from Loras, like a ticking time bomb waiting to go off at any moment. You couldn’t even look at him wrong or he’d flip out. Anyway, he drank a lot. Total alcoholic. He messed around with some drugs, too, and got really fucked up one time and nearly _died_. I don’t remember what he took, but I think he mixed it with something. I don’t know. Anyway, Loras was trying to call him, no answer, went over to his place, and found him on the floor. Loras saved his _life_. He’d totally be dead if not for my brother.” Margaery raised her eyebrows at this and nodded her head as if to emphasize how amazing Loras was for doing that.

 

Surprisingly, none of this bothered Sansa. She took a deep breath, released it, and instantly felt a little better. “That’s not so bad,” she said, shrugging one of her shoulders.

 

Margaery’s eyes glittered with a dark amusement, and she leaned towards Sansa again. A big grin spread over Margaery’s face. “Oh, it gets better,” she said, and the feeling of foreboding settled itself inside of Sansa’s chest again. “There was this one time they were all joking around, you know, just being guys and talking about shit. Well, Loras was like, ‘I’ve been never with a prostitute before.’ Some of the guys were saying, ‘Oh, I have,’ but most of them were saying, ‘Oh, I haven’t,’ and Sandor was like, ‘I have.’ Like, oh my god, isn’t that gross? Like _who_ sleeps with prostitutes? It’s so _dirty_.”

 

Sansa’s hands were clutching harder onto her arms, her nails digging into her skin. The feeling in her chest was painful now—like the weight of an anvil slowly being lowered onto it, crushing the breath out of her—but Margaery didn’t stop there.

 

Margaery gasped as if suddenly remembering something, and one of her hands darted out and touched Sansa on the knee. “He killed a man once. With a knife, he stabbed him to death. I don’t know if it was his first time and he’d never done that before, or if he had killed people before.” Margaery shook her head at this. “Loras never talked about that. It was one of those things he wouldn’t talk about with me, but it wasn’t like Sandor just stabbed the guy over and over and over in the chest or anything. Like, he knew just where to put the knife to make sure the guy died with one quick stroke. Right in the jugular, Sansa. That doesn’t _sound_ like someone who’s only done it once, you know? But I’m not sure. Anyway, I only know about it because he got caught. Sandor has a record, and they found his fingerprints or something like that. It went to court, and they were calling it murder at first, but then they were calling it manslaughter. Next, they were arguing voluntary or involuntary. It’s, like, ten to twenty years if it’s voluntary. Somehow, though, and I don’t know how because he _stabbed_ the guy—they argued provocation, involuntary, and mental illness. Sandor had to go to a ward for a while, pay a fine, and serve probation for it, and that was it. I guess he cleaned up because of it. He and Loras stopped hanging out after that, though.”

 

There were no words in Sansa’s throat, only the tight feeling of constriction closing around her windpipe. She tried to breathe, but it was hard. Everything in the room, including Margaery’s face, became blurry to her, and Margaery reached out for Sansa’s arms to gently hold her upright as Sansa started to sway.

 

“Sansa?” Margaery asked kindly, though there was worry in her voice. “Sansa, are you okay? You’re crying—”

 

Sansa could feel the hot tears splashing down her cheeks, falling onto her arms below. “Please take me home,” she managed to say, shaking all the while. “I want to go home.”

 

“Sansa, I’m sorry,” Margaery said softer this time. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you those things—”

 

“ _Please_ ,” Sansa said more forcefully, “I want to go _home_.”

 

Margaery relented and helped Sansa from the bed. She led her all the way down the stairs and out to the car. They drove back to Winterfell Avenue in silence, and when they reached her house, Sansa got out of the car without saying goodbye to Margaery. She walked up the staircase to her room, encountering nobody along the way to stop her, and slowly closed her bedroom door behind her. Sansa took one look at her bed, and then she walked over to it without a single thought inside of her head—just pain, a unbearable pain over everything she had heard out of Margaery’s mouth—and she fell onto her bed and cried herself to sleep, even though it was still only in the afternoon.

 

When Sansa fell asleep, she dreamt that she was afraid. She was running through dark hallways and corridors, so tall it seemed almost like a castle around her, and she ran and ran and ran—her hands reaching down and holding up the gown she was wearing to help keep it out of the way of her feet. Sansa kept looking back from time to time to see if anyone was following her, but only the soft glow of orange torchlight flickered behind her, and there was no one on her heels.

 

She ran herself all the way to her bedroom, and she didn’t know how it was her bedroom, but in the dream it was hers, and she barred the door. Her heart was erratic within her chest, and when she turned to face the window, there were flames outside of it—high, bright flames licking the sky with sickly hues of jade green and orange swirls that mingled together as one. Glowing embers rose slowly into the air, floating as if in a dance with the windless sky. Sansa had never seen anything like it in all of her life. It was unreal—and absolutely horrifying.

 

Her legs backed her towards her bed, where she sat down once she reached it. She wanted tomorrow to come. Tomorrow to come and wash everything clean, put out the fire that was burning everything to the ground, and tell her what was to become of her. Suddenly, she remembered her puppy she once had as a little girl, and Sansa missed her dearly. “Lady,” she said aloud in a pained voice, which almost sounded like a childish whimper.

 

Something stirred behind her, and a hand reached out of the darkness and grabbed her wrist. Here in her room, where she thought she was safe, she was not. The shock was so great, so terrifying, that Sansa opened her mouth to scream, but a rough and sticky hand clamped over her mouth to smother her scream, and the smell of blood was overwhelming to the point it almost made her sick. He was a hulking frame behind her, tall and large. Too strong to fight. She knew better than to try.

 

“I could keep you safe,” he said in that low, rough voice of his, right into her left ear, and Sansa knew that voice. She trembled at it. “They’re all afraid of me. No one would hurt you again, or I’d kill them.” Despite the assurance of safety, she didn’t feel very safe. She was frightened out of her mind. Sansa found herself shaking her head, refusing to believe it, and the hand left her mouth. With a hard wrench on her arm, he pulled her around and shoved her down onto her bed. The flames rose into the sky beyond her window, painting Sandor’s face in a horrible glow.

 

He had a knife. Sansa didn’t see where it came from, but it was in his hand. Suddenly, the blade pushed against her throat, cold and biting and hard. _Right in the jugular_ , whispered a little voice somewhere in the back of her head. Sansa swallowed against the press of cold steel upon her neck. Her life was over, and this was the end. Sandor was going to kill her. He was going to kill her, and everything would be over at last.

 

“Sing, little bird,” he whispered. “Sing for your little life.”

 

Sansa opened her mouth to sing—

 

—and shot awake in bed, gasping for air. Her scarf was knotted around her neck, her body laying on it and causing it to pull in her sleep. Sansa immediately tore the scarf off of her neck and threw it aside. It fell to the floor. She looked to her window, but nothing was outside of it except for a lowering sun. It was probably getting closer to evening now, and Sansa wondered what time it was. She glanced over at her clock. It was past six.

 

Her phone was buzzing in her purse on the bed beside her.

 

Sansa looked down at it, staring for a moment in silence. Finally, she reached for her purse and retrieved her phone. Her heart seized up at the number on the screen as it buzzed in her hands. Sansa was breathing heavily, wondering if she should even answer the phone. Today must have been one of his days off, or he wouldn’t be calling at this hour. He would be at work. Sansa debated for a moment before finally swiping her finger over the little onscreen button to accept the call and bringing it to her ear.

 

“Hello?” she asked, and her voice sounded so small and faraway.

 

There was a moment of silence on the other end at first. “Hey,” Sandor finally said, sounding halfway between concern and confusion. “You okay?”

 

“I’m fine,” Sansa said quickly, shaking her head, even though he couldn’t see it through the phone. “I’m sorry. I just woke up from a nap.”

 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

 

“No, it’s okay,” Sansa told him. Her right hand came up to her neck, gently rubbing it, remembering the dream. “What is it?”

 

“I just wanted to see if you wanted to do something,” Sandor answered, “or go somewhere.”

 

She was quiet on her end of the line, wondering if that was something she wanted to do or not. Suddenly, talking to him here on the phone was nothing like the dream, nothing like Margaery’s words, and the feeling of foreboding subsided in lieu of her memory in the sheet fort, and Sansa found herself smiling softly in response. “Sure,” she said, but Sansa didn’t want to go back to his apartment, so she named the first thing that came to her mind. “How about the beach?” Sansa asked him.

 

“Okay,” Sandor answered in amusement. “I’ll be by to pick you up.”

 

“Okay,” she breathed out, and Sansa touched her neck again. “I’ll see you, then.”

 

She brought the phone away from her ear, staring down at it as the called ended, and wondered why she was agreeing to see him again. After everything she had heard from Margaery, it was the last thing she should be doing. Every sensibility screamed against it, but Sansa wanted to see him again, even if it was the last time, to confront him about it. She wanted to know the truth. She wanted to ask Sandor if all of those things were true. She wanted to hear it straight out of his mouth if any of it was true. She deserved it. He owed her that much at least.

 

Sansa went to her mirror to look over herself. Her hair was a mess, so she ran a brush through it, and she cleaned off her face after crying earlier. She didn’t bother putting on any makeup since it was the last thing on her mind, and she settled on a loose and baggy peasant top and jeans to wear. Nothing special, and nothing to make her stick out. Sansa walked downstairs when she was done, and she headed out the front door. He would be here soon if he wasn’t already waiting down the street, but when Sansa looked up, there was his car on the curb as usual.

 

She wasn’t afraid yet, so she walked until she reached the end, and then she climbed into the passenger seat of his car—and still, Sansa wasn’t afraid, but there was no enthusiasm in her actions either. They were almost robotic instead of voluntary, and she realized Sandor hadn’t pulled off yet, so she dared to look over at him in the driver seat.

 

He was staring at her with that same look of concern in his eyes like he had that evening in the sheet fort, and Sansa felt her lip tremble at it. His brow furrowed as he looked at her, and Sandor reached out to touch her. His fingers barely grazed her shoulder, and Sansa flinched away from him. Sandor immediately pulled his fingers back as if she had burnt him with her reaction, his hand trembling and then flexing close to his chest where he held it. He turned his head towards the windshield, but his hand still flexed in agitation in front of his chest.

 

“Do you want to go back home?” Sandor asked her, and his voice was more serious this time than it had been over the phone.

 

Sansa thought about it in silence before shaking her head. “No, let’s go to the beach,” she told him softly, and when she glanced over at him again, she saw Sandor nod his head in a tight motion.

 

“Okay,” he told her, though his voice was on edge.

 

The drive to the beach was quiet the whole way there, though Sansa wondered what was going through Sandor’s mind. When they reached the strip of parking lot, Sandor parked the car, and Sansa moved to get out of it. She shut the door and walked forward without looking back, yet still wondering if Sandor was following her. Her jaw steeled itself in place as she tried to make herself strong. Sansa was going to ask him about everything Margaery had mentioned to her because she needed to know the truth about all of it, and out here on the beach in the public but away from the prying ears and eyes of people, it would be easier to do. It was evening time, and the beach had cleared away most of its people, though a few were still here, but this spot was empty—and it was beautiful, too.

 

Sansa sat down cross-legged where the sand was still dry, staring out at the water. It glistened under the failing sun, burning bright with ripples of clear white light across it. A soft breeze caught in her hair, and Sansa took a deep breath before exhaling it. She heard footsteps approaching behind her, and finally, Sandor sat down not too far away from her left side, but he still kept some distance between them. They both sat there in silence. For how long, Sansa didn’t know. Eventually, she found her voice.

 

“I was talking with Margaery earlier,” Sansa said, but she wouldn’t look at Sandor beside her. “My friend,” she added. “Loras is her brother.”

 

“What about her?” Sandor asked, but his voice didn’t sound so welcoming.

 

“She said,” Sansa started, but her voice caught in her throat. “She said a lot of things about you.”

 

Sansa could see Sandor out of the corner of her eyes. He was sitting with his feet outward and propped against the sand, his knees up and his arms resting folded across them. He pulled his arms outward by the elbows until only his hands were clasped together, and then he rubbed them anxiously against each other. “Did she?” Sandor asked this time, and the unwelcoming tone was stronger now, but he didn’t ask what Margaery had said about him. Sansa almost expected him to ask, but he didn’t.

 

“Everything she told me,” Sansa whispered, her voice trembling with the effort to stay calm, “she heard from _Loras_.” Sansa finally turned her head to look at Sandor, and his jaw was tight in place, his hands wringing together with restless movements. Sansa expected him to deny it. She expected him to say whatever she had heard was all bullshit, that none of it was true, and that Margaery was an excitable young girl who liked to make things up or exaggerate them beyond what they were in reality. Any of those things would have been a good enough answer for her.

 

Sandor didn’t even ask what Margaery had said to her, though. It was like he already knew everything that was said without having to ask, and he didn’t even bother trying to deny anything. That was worst part. Sandor didn’t even try to deny it, and he didn’t even hear Sansa repeat any of it out loud. He turned around in the sand, however, to face her, dropping one of his knees in the process. Every movement of his body was jerky and twitchy, and Sandor looked so uncomfortable that it started to make Sansa’s heart beat hard—and that familiar crushing weight returned to her chest, suffocating her.

 

“There is a reason I don’t talk about my past, Sansa,” Sandor said firmly, gesturing with one of his agitated hands close to his face, “because that’s not _me_. That person is dead. He died a long time ago.” Sandor shook his hand back and forth. “That _isn’t_ me. I need you t—”

 

He cut himself off before he could finish his sentence, and dipped his head down, clutching it between his hands. Sansa watched on with a trembling lip, but Sandor remained bent over and quiet for some time, clutching his head. Finally, he lifted it again, a pained expression twisting his whole face before her.

 

“Do you understand that, Sansa?” Sandor asked her. “Do you understand that isn’t me?”

 

Sansa wanted to understand that. She really did, but she felt her breathing quicken and deepen until she had to breathe out of her mouth just to get air into her lungs. It hurt so much, every breath. She felt tears stinging at the back of her eyes, blurring her vision slightly.

 

Sandor’s expression twisted even more as he stared back at her. “Please,” he said firmly, shaking his head, “ _please_ don’t look at me like that—”

 

Sansa breathed inward so hard that she coughed suddenly. The cough cleared her throat, though, and then she felt like she could breathe again. She could breathe again, and her chest was clear, but her nerves still shook like crazy. She didn’t want to judge him. She really didn’t want to judge him, not when he looked to be in as much pain as her. Sansa didn’t want to judge him, but she didn’t know what else to do. How could Sandor have done all of those things, and then say that wasn’t him? Of course, it was him. He wasn’t possessed to do those things. He wasn’t forced to do them. Sandor _chose_ to do them. He _chose_ to be that way. He _chose_ —

 

 _He chose to change_ , Sansa suddenly thought as she stared over at him. Sandor chose to be different. He chose to turn his back on all of those things. He chose to turn his back on that life. He chose to run a pub instead of run people into the ground. He chose to give up alcohol. He chose to try to be a better person. He chose to spend time with her instead of some floozy. He chose to paint his apartment with her, and he chose to buy her the cute ducky soap. He chose to give her a chance, even though he was trying to say no for moral reasons because those things actually mattered to him now, and he chose to join her in the sheet fort, and he chose to kiss her, and when she wanted to stop, he chose to cuddle with her—

 

There were tears in her eyes, but they were there for a completely different reason now. Sansa stared at Sandor for the longest time without words until her breathing slowed down and returned to normal. She wasn’t sure what possessed her, some instinct deep within maybe, but she reached out with her hand to touch his cheek. Sandor blinked when she touched him, and when he did, two separate tears fell from his eyes. One of them hit the hand she held against his cheek.

 

Sansa pushed herself onto her knees and moved closer until she could wrap her arms around his neck. She leaned the side of her head against his, and Sandor’s arms wrapped around her as well, though he clutched her more tightly than she clutched him. She could feel his chest shaking against hers as he let out a deep breath, and his fingers dug into her back as he buried his face against her shoulder. There was a wetness dampening her shirt there, but she found that she didn’t particularly care.

 

Sansa closed her eyes and stroked her hand over his hair, holding Sandor in her arms as the sun sunk lower in the sky beyond them.

 

 


	30. The Light from Inside Her

_* * *_

 

Jaime watched from his vehicle, which was parked on the Narrow Sea Strip for his evening duty of watching the beach because the city was quiet of trouble for now, as he sat in complete silence by himself. He held a half-eaten Twizzler close to his mouth, but he hadn’t taken another bite of it ever since Sandor and Sansa pulled up in the parking lot in Sandor’s car. Jaime imagined this is how Brienne must have felt that first night, seeing them together on the pier. Instead of acting rashly and getting out of the vehicle, Jaime chose to sit and wait and watch in silence to see what would happen between the two of them.

 

It looked like an uncomfortable exchange, whatever it was they were talking about with each other. Both of them were upset. Jaime could tell by their body language alone. They only spoke to each other, though; nothing else occurred until Sansa reached out for Sandor’s face and cupped his cheek. Jaime felt his chest seize up at the sight, and the instinct to interrupt was strong, but he fought it down. Sansa touched Sandor’s face, and then she moved onto her knees and scooted closer until she could wrap her arms around the Sandor’s neck. Sandor hugged her back tightly, his big arms encircling her smaller body and his hands gripping against Sansa’s back. Jaime felt so uncomfortable that he wanted to look away from the scene, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

 

Brienne had informed Jaime of her talk with Sansa about that day when Jaime had picked Sansa up from the side of the street, and Jaime had believed it all until now. He didn’t question what Sansa had said about Sandor not forcing himself on her, though, but he questioned Sansa’s honesty with Brienne. Sansa made it seem like she and Sandor weren’t involved, but if this was anything to go by, then the two of them were involved with each other. Maybe Sandor had refused her that day and made her cry and call Jaime, but clearly Sandor had changed his tune about all of that. Sandor was here with Sansa now, and his hands were all over her.

 

Jaime’s eyes were glued in place on them as they sat there on the white beach sand, clutching onto each other, and eventually, they pulled away. Sandor’s hand rose up to Sansa’s face, and Jaime watched with a tightening constriction within his chest as Sandor’s fingers gently brushed away her hair from her face, tucking it behind an ear. Sandor leaned forward and kissed her, then, and Sansa’s hands came up to either side of Sandor’s face to hold him, and Jaime finally closed his eyes. He couldn’t look at that.

 

Bowing his head, Jaime threw the piece of candy aside. He didn’t particularly care where it landed in all honesty. Jaime couldn’t understand what Sansa saw in Sandor, why she was with him, or why she would let a man like him _kiss_ her. That very same hand that Jaime had seen brushing away Sansa’s hair had gripped another man by his hair and slammed his head against a wall until his skull cracked open and blood poured everywhere. If it hadn’t been for Jaime intervening, Sandor would have spread bits of the guy’s brain matter and bone against the bricks. That man nearly died, but they managed to get him help in time and save his life. Sandor was lucky with that. If the man had died, it would have been more than just aggravated assault.

 

When Jaime dared to venture another look on the beach, they were no longer kissing, but they were still holding each other and it looked like they were talking, too. They stayed for a good hour or two until the sun had set before they returned to Sandor’s car and drove off, and Jaime realized he was way past schedule for being off-duty.

 

“Shit,” Jaime cursed aloud to himself, and he buckled himself up before cranking up the police vehicle’s engine. He pulled out of the parking lot himself, driving off towards the police station.

 

Today was Brienne’s day off, which she had been spending at Crossroads Camp, or she would have been here with Jaime and she would have seen it, too. Tomorrow was her day off as well as his, though, and they had a day planned with Tyrion and his new wife. The announcement of Tyrion’s marriage had startled Jaime because he never even remembered being invited to the _wedding_ , which was upsetting, but he let it go as soon as Tyrion explained to him over the phone that she was a mail order bride. Jaime’s eyes had widened at that, leaving him in utter disbelief over the situation. Tyrion was married, and he married a mail order bride on the fly.

 

Sometimes, Jaime thought, his whole family was _really_ fucked up.

 

Pulling into the station, Jaime changed out of his uniform and tucked it into his locker unlike Brienne, who liked to take hers home with her. He went out to the parking lot to his car. Jaime hopped in it, cranked the engine, and drove off towards the house. It wasn’t too long before he was home, and he was trying to push what he had witnessed on the beach with Sandor and Sansa out of his mind. It wasn’t something he could share with Brienne. It would upset her if he even brought it up, but she wouldn’t be upset with Sandor—she’d be upset with Jaime.

 

Brienne had been making friends with Sandor at the camp. It pissed Jaime off. First of all, Sandor was a psychotic criminal. Second of all, he was spending his time with innocent _children_ at the camp. Did the camp not do background checks or something? How was Sandor even allowed on the premises, being a felon? Third of all, how could Brienne even stomach being _friends_ with the guy? Brienne knew about Sandor’s aggravated assault charges, the manslaughter charge, his drunken brawls, and the criminal conspiracies that got him prison time. What the hell was wrong with her? Jaime loved her to death, but he just didn’t understand how Brienne could be _okay_ with all of that.

 

Jaime walked through the front door, expecting to see Brienne up and about the house, but all was silent. He looked around for a moment before heading towards the bedroom, and Jaime found Brienne already lying in bed, curled under the sheets and fast asleep. A gentle smile curved his lips upward, and Jaime leaned against the doorframe to watch her silently in her sleep. Jaime laid his head against the frame, too, slowly exhaling the air from his lungs.

 

_“And maybe he’s different now,” Brienne added unsurely._

_“Men don’t change,” Jaime told her, knowing who Sandor Clegane was inside and out, and knowing men that dark didn’t learn how to see the light again._

_There was a short pause of silence between them._

_“You changed,” she said._

 

Jaime brought his hand up to the bridge of his nose to pinch it as he shut his eyes. Jaime had never bashed anyone’s skull in because they had pissed him off, and Jaime had never stabbed anyone in the throat, but he had shot criminals on duty. He had also done a lot of things he wasn’t very proud of in regards to his father, though to be completely honest, there were lot of things Jaime had done that he wasn’t proud of that had absolutely nothing to do with his father. Jaime had gotten carried away with bending the rules and then breaking the rules that wouldn’t bend for him. Maybe it was for the thrill of it and the excitement, but Jaime hadn’t played things by the book and Brienne had nearly busted him for it.

 

Before they were involved with each other, Jaime and Brienne hated each other. It was outright gut-wrenching hate. Every time they were in the same room together, all they could do was glare until one of them pushed the line and began their invisible tug-of-war for power. They shot insults back and forth all day long until their tongues hurt from talking. Jaime had never been so antagonized by someone before and some part of him found it exciting and fun, and so he antagonized her right back. Half of the time he actually _enjoyed_ it.

 

Eventually, Brienne started following Jaime around and he didn’t even know it. She caught him in the act of doing things he could have lost his badge over if she reported him, and not only that, but he could have served prison time for them as well. Brienne almost did report him. She came so close to it—and then their whole lives changed forever.

 

Jaime had been working on a case involving the serial killer, Ramsay ‘The Skinner’ Bolton, trying to track him down along with Brienne. Brienne had received a call about the psycho’s possible whereabouts, scribbled down the address at her desk, and then she punched it into the GPS on her phone. She had left the address sitting on her desk and left the station without telling Jaime. Brienne had gone missing for a few hours, and the inspector had been complaining about how he couldn’t get a hold of her. Jaime had inspected her desk, found the piece of paper, grabbed it, and ran out the front door of the station.

 

He had arrived at the address just in time. Ramsay had been inside, the one on the phone, looking to ensnare one of the police officers dogging his steps to play with them. He had caught Brienne, who was tied up, beaten, and missing straps of flesh. Ramsay had attacked Jaime from the shadows, pulling a knife on him, but Jaime had a gun. Jaime had pulled it out, shooting Ramsay in the shoulder. Ramsay had screamed, and Jaime kicked him off, standing up again. Towering over the little runt of a fucker, Jaime had slowly raised the gun and fired again on purpose. The bullet had lodged itself in Ramsay’s knee. Another scream had torn through the air, and it had finally awoken Brienne from her state of unconsciousness.

 

Jaime had used the butt of his gun to hit Ramsay across the face, breaking a few of the man’s teeth in the process, and then he raised the gun to Ramsay’s open and bleeding mouth. All it would have taken was one finger to pull back on the trigger, and it all would have been over for good.

 

“No, Jaime,” Brienne had choked from the corner of the room. “Please, no, don’t kill him.”

 

“He deserves it,” Jaime had said back, but he wasn’t looking at Brienne. He was looking at Ramsay’s cold, dead eyes down the barrel of his gun.

 

“No, please,” Brienne had pleaded with him. “He deserves prison. You’re not a killer, Jaime. You’re an officer of the _law_. Don’t _kill_ him.”

 

Jaime had debated this in his head for a while, the outcomes and the consequences. Firing a gun on duty would have meant mental evaluation again, and Jaime hadn’t wanted to go through that for the hundredth time in a row. Well, it hadn’t been a hundred times, but it had been enough times that Jaime had lost count of them all. Each time had been torture. Every time Jaime had pulled the trigger on duty and someone had died because of it, it was procedure to have a psych evaluation, which drove Jaime nuts because they would put him on temporarily desk duty for a few days and take away his gun. It was only procedure, but it was an annoying fucking procedure.

 

Firing the gun had also meant killing Ramsay Bolton, a sadistic serial killer who deserved nothing more than to be lying six feet underground, but killing him also meant upsetting Brienne. Jaime’s face had twisted at that thought. Since when had he cared what Brienne thought of him? Jaime had tried to tell himself in that moment that he _didn’t_ care what Brienne thought of him, and he had cocked his gun to _prove_ just how much he didn’t care what Brienne thought of him, but Brienne had hollered out, begging with Jaime not to kill him. Pleading with him not to kill him, and Jaime’s eyes had locked with Ramsay’s cold blue ones.

 

Then, with his final decision made, Jaime had cracked the butt of his gun against Ramsay’s face a second time. The man had howled in response. Jaime had cuffed Ramsay after that, and then he had released Brienne. She had been able to walk just fine, so together they had carried Ramsay out of there and brought him into the station. Brienne had received medical attention for her wounds, Ramsay had received consecutive life sentences in maximum security prison, and the relationship between Jaime and Brienne had blossomed into some of kind of strange and grudging respect for each other.

 

Despite her previous threats to turn Jaime in for what she had uncovered on him, Brienne never did that. She had begun to treat him with respect, and Jaime had begun to watch his actions. He had begun to think about it before he bent a rule or tried to break one. Most of the time, he had slowly begun to show a reluctant respect for the rules. Brienne could have ended him. She could have turned him in and ruined him, but instead she had decided to give him a chance because she saw some good in him—and Jaime had found himself beginning a long and slow process of redemption from that point forward.

 

Jaime had changed. He had changed a lot, and he had changed because of her. Sometimes, Jaime even thought, he changed for her. He had never realized it at the time that it was occurring, of course, but now when he looked back on it, it all made perfect sense to him. If it hadn’t been for Brienne stopping him, Jaime didn’t know the type of person he would be today. He certainly wouldn’t be standing here in the doorway to their bedroom, watching Brienne sleep peacefully in their bed.

 

Slowly, he shucked off his shoes and undressed down to his boxers and undershirt. He could have taken a shower, but it wasn’t like he physically exerted himself today, so he wasn’t gross and sweaty. Jaime crawled under the covers with Brienne, and he scooted close to her to snuggle against Brienne’s back as he wrapped an arm around her waist to pull her close. Jaime gently pressed a kiss to the back of her neck, closing his eyes. Brienne was Jaime’s anchor. Every time when he felt like the wind was going to blow him away, he just grabbed onto her and everything was fine. She kept him grounded, and she kept him in place. Jaime fell asleep against her back, perfectly content and his whole body comfortably still.

 

He had set an alarm on his phone for five in the morning, and it woke him up immediately, but it wasn’t loud enough to wake Brienne. She slept right through it. Jaime had some yard work he wanted to get done today before Tyrion came over with his new wife, and he wanted to get it done in the early morning when it was still cool outside. Nothing was worse than doing yard work in the sweltering heat of summer.

 

Jaime got out of bed, took a shower to wake himself up, and dressed up in a simple pair of blue jeans and light blue t-shirt. He cooked some eggs and bacon for breakfast, put some aside for Brienne in the fridge for when she woke up, and walked outside to the shed to grab his safety goggles and the chainsaw. Today, he was taking down that godforsaken tree in their front yard once and for all. It shed big waxy leaves all over the place, and it drove Jaime insane. Brienne had liked it because it was a magnolia tree or something like that, but Jaime hated it. So it was going down.

 

He revved up the chainsaw and went to sawing. Of course, after about maybe only ten or fifteen minutes of sawing, Jaime heard some background noise that sounded a lot like yelling, so he turned off the chainsaw and turned around to look behind himself. Brienne was standing there in her purple yoga pants and the spaghetti strap shirt that she had fallen asleep in last night, her fists clenched at her sides, glaring at him like she wanted to punch him in the face.

 

“What the _hell_ are you doing?” Brienne demanded, gesturing at the tree.

 

“I’m sawing it down,” Jaime told her matter-of-factly, and then he pointed at the tree with the chainsaw. “This baby is going to be firewood when I’m done with her,” he added, and Jaime went to rev the chainsaw again, but Brienne hollered out at him.

 

“Put that chainsaw away!” she shouted at him. “It’s five in the morning! You’re going to wake the whole neighborhood, you idiot!”

 

“I always was a bit of a cock,” Jaime agreed, looking up at the tree with appraisal. “I’ll give the firewood away for free. That will calm everyone down.”

 

“Jaime,” Brienne said more sternly this time, “put it away. It’s still dark out here. You’re going to cut off your hand if you can’t see what you’re doing—”

 

“Nonsense,” Jaime said, interrupting Brienne. “I’m not going to cut off my _hand_ —” He revved the chainsaw again, but it jerked in his grasp, and Jaime lost control of it—it jerked right out of his hands, and Jaime quickly backed away from it as it fell to the grass.

 

Brienne thought quickly. She hurried over to where Jaime had the chainsaw plugged in and yanked on the orange extension cord. It popped out of the socket, and the chainsaw suddenly died on the ground.

 

“Whew,” Jaime said. “That was a close one.”

 

When he looked over at Brienne, she was glaring at him. She pointed her finger at him. “No more chainsaw until it’s at least _daylight_ outside,” Brienne snapped, and she scooped up the chainsaw and its power cord as Jaime’s jaw fell open, and then she brought them into the house with her, shutting the door behind herself. Jaime stood out there for a minute with his arms crossed over his chest, glaring at the house. Well, _that_ wasn’t fair.

 

Eventually, he went back inside and passed some time until the sun came up, retrieving his chainsaw and its power cord from Brienne once more before heading back outside and finishing what he had started that morning. He had felled the whole tree and was working on cutting it into pieces for carrying when a flashy new model BMW with glossy black paint leisurely pulled up into their driveway and parked there. Jaime turned off the chainsaw, putting it down onto the ground. He slowly began to walk towards the vehicle. Jaime knew who owned that vehicle. That was Tyrion’s vehicle.

 

The back door opened, and Tyrion stepped out of it first. Tyrion had a driver, but the driver always waited in the vehicle. Jaime imagined he must have been paid very well to just sit and wait like that. Tyrion turned around and offered his hand to the lady inside, and Jaime saw a slender pale hand grasp Tyrion’s hand before the most beautiful goddess he had ever seen in his life emerged from the backseat of Tyrion’s vehicle in a knee-length pearl-colored Armani gown that shone under the sun. As she dipped her head forward to get out, her long silvery blonde hair with golden streaks in it fell all around her face. Jaime didn’t see her face until she lifted it once she stood upright, and he was stunned at the sight of her. She had gorgeous violet eyes, and on top of her head was a sparkling silver tiara. Jaime’s look of awe turned into confusion. What the hell was she doing with a tiara on her head?

 

“Jaime!” Tyrion said happily. “It is so good to see you, brother.”

 

“Yeah,” Jaime agreed, looking down at Tyrion, who he just now realized was wearing a black suit. “Good to see you, too, Tyrion.”

 

“Jaime, this is Dany,” Tyrion said, gesturing at his wife. “Dany,” Tyrion added in a slower voice for her, “this is my _brother_ , Jaime.”

 

Dany glared at Jaime. She glared at him pretty hard, too. Jaime cleared his throat and tried to extend his hand to her for a handshake, but Dany looked down at his hand and glared even harder. Jaime slowly pulled his hand back to his side.

 

“Does she not shake hands?” Jaime asked.

 

Tyrion slowly shook his hand. “She won’t shake anyone’s hand,” he said with a sigh, “and she doesn’t speak but a few words of English, but I know a little bit of her language, so we seem to communicate just fine.”

 

At Tyrion’s disclosure of her lack of English speaking skills, Jaime decided to address the tiara on her head. He cut his eyes at it once, and then he looked pointedly at Tyrion. “Why is she wearing a tiara? Is she going to prom?”

 

Tyrion sighed deeply, and then he ran his hand over his face before meeting Jaime’s gaze with an explanation. “She kept _demanding_ that she wanted a crown, so I _bought_ her one,” Tyrion said.

 

“Are you _serious_?” Jaime asked, unable to stop himself, but he was grinning like a madman. “What’s it made out of?” Jaime inquired further. “Rhinestones and aluminum?”

 

Tyrion made a face like he didn’t want to answer that question, but he did anyway. “White gold and diamonds,” he admitted slowly.

 

Jaime gaped at him. “It’s _real_? You bought her a real fucking tiara made out of _diamonds_ and _gold_?”

 

Tyrion glowered at Jaime, shaking his fist. “She can _tell_ the real thing from the fake!” Tyrion shot back quietly. “And she wanted the _real_ thing!”

 

Jaime raised his brow, shaking his head. “Wow,” he said. “Just wow. Anyway,” he suddenly cut in, and Jaime gave a little bow at Dany, which was meant to be mocking, but she seemed to really like it because all of a sudden she was smiling at Jaime and her face looked so inviting and pleasant now. It made her a thousand times more beautiful when she smiled instead of glared menacingly at him. Jaime grinned back and extended his arm to her, and Dany took it without hesitation. Well, bowing must have been the way into this woman’s heart.

 

“Let’s bring you inside, lovely lady,” Jaime said, and he led Dany inside the house with Tyrion trailing behind them. Once they were inside, Brienne was already dressed for the day, and she was working in the kitchen on cooking a meal for all of them. Jaime pulled out a chair for Dany, which made her smile brilliantly at him again. When Jaime glanced over at Tyrion, his little brother pointed a warning finger at him and narrowed his eyes. Jaime held up both of his hands in response without saying anything, which seemed to be enough to make Tyrion happy.

 

Jaime went to help Brienne cook, and they all had a nice meal together. Jaime was almost afraid Dany wouldn’t eat any of the food because it wasn’t five star restaurant cuisine, but she dug in and ate happily like the rest of them. When everyone was done, Dany even insisted on helping Jaime and Brienne clean up the dishes and put everything away. Jaime hadn’t expected that either, and judging by the shocked look on Tyrion’s face, neither did he.

 

“She must really like you,” Tyrion said quietly as Jaime walked by him, referring to Dany’s behavior with the dishes.

 

“All I did was bow,” Jaime answered with a shrug of his shoulders.

 

“She likes bowing,” Tyrion informed him.

 

“Why does she like bowing?”

 

Tyrion shrugged his shoulders. “I have _no_ idea,” he admitted. “She likes crowns, tiaras, fine clothes, adoring masses, and people bowing to her. You would almost think she was some kind of royalty with the way she acts.”

 

“ _Is_ she royalty?” Jaime inquired, taking a seat by Tyrion at the dining table. His interest was suddenly piqued with that idea. There wasn’t any royalty in the family before, and she was foreign, so it was possible.

 

“I don’t know,” Tyrion said, but his fingers were stroking his chin in a thoughtful manner. “I’ll have to research it.”

 

“Google that shit,” Jaime said, nudging Tyrion’s arm.

 

Tyrion rolled his eyes. “I’m not _Googling_ it. I’ll hire a professional.”

 

Jaime snorted at his little brother. “You and your money. You make me sick.”

 

“I can’t help that I picked the fast track career in banking and you didn’t,” Tyrion said, eyeing Jaime with a knowing look.

 

“How are you even a good banker with the way you blow money?” Jaime asked him.

 

“I blow my money easily enough, but not other people’s money,” Tyrion said with a matter-of-fact tone.

 

“At least you aren’t in politics like the rest of them.”

 

Tyrion made a disgusted face at that suggestion. “Thank God,” he agreed. “I’d rather not have my head on a pike every time someone didn’t like something I said.”

 

“Every word out of your mouth is something someone somewhere doesn’t like you saying,” Jaime told him.

 

Tyrion held out his fist at Jaime, and the brothers did a little fist bump together.

 

“Amen to that,” Tyrion concurred, and he started laughing loudly. Jaime started to laugh as well, and even though she had no idea what they were laughing at, Dany decided she thought it was funny and started laughing right along with them. Brienne only started laughing because everyone _else_ was laughing, and that just made Jaime laugh even harder.

 

It was good to spend some time with family, Jaime thought with a smile on his face.

 

 


	31. I’m Not Getting Tired of You

_* * *_

 

A soft patter of rain fell from the sky, but so far it was just a drizzle and not an outright downpour. Sandor looked up at the sky, but it didn’t look like it was going to rain harder anytime soon. The clouds above the tree tops weren’t so dark, and the foliage even managed to block some of the rain. There was sunlight out to the northeast, the direction from which the clouds originally came, and the storm clouds were blowing southwest with the wind. Eventually, the rain clouds would pass and bring back the sunshine for today, but for now it was drizzling and overcast.

 

Slowly, he looked forward again. To get a view of his target, Sandor had to peer around the corner of the tree. He was hunting, and Arya was his target. There in his hands was a high powered paintball gun he had snagged from one of the equipment rooms. He had never seen them use paintball guns for anything yet, so Sandor wondered if it was supposed to be some kind of gaming reward if everyone behaved or performed well for the week or the month. Also, strapped across his back was that foam axe he had been eyeing for the longest time. He couldn’t hold the paintball gun _and_ the axe at the same time, so Sandor had made a decision to use the paintball gun first, immobilize her, and then get her with the axe.

 

When she finally separated from Hot Pie and the kid waddled off in another direction, Arya started to hurry off through the trees. Sandor lifted the paintball gun, carefully took aim, and despite the fact that she was moving, when he pulled the trigger, Arya got a nice fat splat of blue paint in the middle of her back and fell over from the impact. She lost her balance, hitting the ground face first, but her palms broke her fall. Arya cursed out loud, and Sandor lowered the paintball gun in one hand and rushed towards her.

 

He dropped the paintball gun as he headed towards her, and then he quickly grabbed for the foam axe strapped across his back. As Arya pushed herself up onto her knees, the foam axe collided with the back of her head and sent her flying back down to the wet grass. It didn’t hurt her, of course, not that badly anyway. Sandor didn’t hit her _that_ hard, after all. Arya hollered out another curse and reached up to rub the back of her head before quickly rolling over on the ground and staring up with a scrunched up face of confusion until she spotted Sandor standing above her, patting the foam axe into his other hand as he looked down at her.

 

Arya glared at Sandor. “What the hell was that for?” she demanded, pushing herself upright again.

 

Sandor pointed at her with the axe. “For you little song performance over a week ago,” he told her doggedly, “and for your lack of respect, the stupid little games, and all your bullshit I’ve been putting up with ever since I started at this camp. Things are going to change around here. You’re going to start showing me some respect.”

 

Arya’s glare seemed to intensify, but then it subsided on her face. She pushed herself back onto her feet, brushing off the dirt and wet grass that had stuck itself to her uniform and legs. Arya put her hands on her hips, appraising him with curious gaze halfway between reluctant admiration and annoyance. “Fine,” she finally said. “Deal.” Arya held out her hand. Sandor eyed it with distrust at first, but then he grasped her hand for a shake. Arya didn’t try to do anything like kick him while they shook hands, so Sandor figured things were good between them now. They released hands, and Sandor walked over to scoop up the paintball gun he had dropped on the ground as Arya joined him by his side.

 

“You’re buying me a new t-shirt, though,” Arya suddenly said, referring to the blue paint splatter on the back of the shirt she was wearing now. “You’ve ruined this one.”

 

“Deal,” Sandor agreed, and Arya nodded her head in satisfaction.

 

They made it back to the main grounds of the camp as the rain slacked off, and Sandor took a detour to put up the paintball gun and the foam axe because he really didn’t want to get an earful from Syrio about grabbing them in the first place, and then Sandor and Arya made their way to the clearing. Today was Survival Day, and they were late to the gathering, but better late than never. Everyone was already there, even Hot Pie, and Sandor and Arya stood with the group as Syrio explained the rules of today to them.

 

“Today,” Syrio called out above the crowd, “is Survival Day. Today, we play the ancient game of staying alive . . . in the wilderness. You will pair up with a youth counselor. Some counselors will have more than one follower because we have more youths than adults, but this will be okay. Those of you who can handle more than one youth, please do. You will all be given basic supplies to get started, but you will not be given more if you run out. The goal is to see who can accomplish the most tasks of survival in one day. The _winner_ will get a very special prize at the end.”

 

Excited murmurs passed through the crowd at this news, but Sandor just thought it was stupid. He slowly shook his head, glancing down at Arya. Arya, however, looked eager beside him at the prospect of winning a prize. Oh, great. She was going to make him work for it, so she could win the prize.

 

“So!” Syrio announced to them. “If you will come forward, counselors, to gather your supplies, we will be off at once! Come, come!” Syrio said loudly, clapping his hands together. Sandor went forward to grab one of the navy blue duffle bags with the camp logo on them, and Arya ran up to his side.

 

“Oh my god, what’s inside the bag, I wanna _see_ ,” she said hurriedly, grabbing at the bag and trying to catch the zipper, but Sandor tugged the bag away from her grasp and gave her a pointed look until she glanced up and saw it. Arya frowned at him. “What?” she asked bluntly.

 

“Can you just calm down?” Sandor asked her, gesturing at her with his free hand. “You have the excitability of a Chihuahua. It’s annoying.”

 

Arya crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. “You know,” Arya said, “if you want to be friends, you’ve got to talk to me a lot nicer than that, big guy. Just because I’m younger than you doesn’t mean you get to push me around. Respect is a two-way street, buddy.”

 

Sandor didn’t want to give her that one, but he kind of had to give her that one because it was true. Giving up with a sigh, he held the bag out to her. Arya grinned brightly at him and snatched the bag, nearly ripping the zipper open in her eagerness to see the bag’s contents. She pulled out a sheet of instructions, various camping and survival supplies, a first aid kit, and lastly, an axe. Arya held up the axe with a look of awe in her eyes.

 

“ _Whoa_ ,” she said, “look at this, Sandor.”

 

Sandor immediately snatched the axe from her hand. “I’ll hold onto that,” he told her, and Arya’s jaw dropped open as she glared at him.

 

“Hey, that’s not fair!” Arya protested. “I know how to use an axe! I learned three summers ago!”

 

Sandor lifted his brow with that news. “How long have you _been_ at this camp?” he asked her.

 

“That’s beside the point,” Arya argued with him. “I can use an axe. I bet you’ve never even _held_ one before.”

 

“I’ve held a lot of things before that you don’t know about,” Sandor said, crossing his arms. His left hand was still holding onto the handle of the axe. He expected Arya to argue that as well, but a big grin spread across her face and she made a finger gun at him.

 

“That’s what _she_ said,” Arya taunted, still grinning, and she reached forward to poke his arm with her finger.

 

Sandor uncrossed his arms, swatting her hand away. “Enough with the jokes,” he told her. “The axe is mine.”

 

“But I can _use_ it—”

 

“I once cut a man’s head off with an axe,” Sandor told her nonchalantly, and he twirled the axe in his hand before aiming his gaze directly onto Arya. “Clean off. One swing. His body hit the ground before his head.”

 

Arya narrowed her eyes at Sandor. She was quiet for a moment.

 

“You’re lying,” Arya finally said to him.

 

Sandor shook his head, that same nonchalant look still on his face. “I’m not lying,” he said.

 

“You’re _lying_ ,” Arya repeated, stronger this time, and she crossed her arms.

 

Sandor shook his head again, twirling the axe once more. “I’m not lying.”

 

Arya looked like she was shocked for a few seconds, but the shock quickly faded from her face to be replaced with her eagerness again. She got closer to Sandor, leaning in to whisper. “Did you really kill a man?” she inquired in a soft voice, glancing around to make sure no one was nearby.

 

Sandor didn’t say anything out loud, but he raised his eyebrows and nodded his head at her question.

 

Arya’s eyes suddenly gleamed bright, and she was looking at him half in awe and half grinning. “Can you _teach_ me?” she asked.

 

Sandor swatted her upside the back of her head with his free hand. “Come on,” he said, “pick up the bag and let’s go. We’ve got work to do.”

 

Arya grunted at him, but she picked up the bag like Sandor told her to do. The two of them walked off into the trees, following the instructions Arya read out loud from the sheet of paper that had come from within the blue duffle bag. There were ten tasks total to complete, and they managed to complete seven tasks without any trouble, and then they got to the eighth task. Arya lifted up the paper again, squinting somewhat as she tried to read the small print on the paper.

 

“’The eighth task,’” Arya read out loud, “‘is chopping down and collecting firewood with the axe that has been provided to you. You must split the logs with the axe, and you need at least ten pieces. Size does not matter. No sticks, twigs, or branches will count towards your firewood total.’” Arya glanced up at Sandor from over the sheet of paper in her hands. “You heard ‘em, big boy,” Arya said, and she snapped her fingers and pointed at the stack of logs they had approached for this task. “Get to chopping. Let’s see you swing that axe like you’re rolling heads.”

 

Sandor lifted the axe and pointed at her threateningly with it. “One of these days—” he began, but Arya cut him off.

 

“I’ll ride piggyback on your back while making bunny ears on your head, and I’ll have Sansa take a picture of it,” Arya said, holding up her hand and rubbing her fingers together. “Blackmail, baby.”

 

Sandor made a rumbling noise in the back of his throat, but otherwise turned his back on Arya and approached the stack of logs. He really didn’t have time to argue with her. He had to start cutting these logs, or they were going to fall behind in the game. Sandor grabbed one of the logs with his hand and set it up on the stump, and he swung downwards—but he had the angle wrong, and the axe just got stuck a little diagonally in the log without going but maybe three to four inches in despite the strength he put behind the swing.

 

Arya gasped out loud. “You were _totally_ lying!” she shot back all of a sudden. “You didn’t chop a man’s head off with an axe! You can’t even _hold_ an axe properly!”

 

Sandor slowly turned around to face Arya, pointing his finger at her. Okay, so he had lied about that. He had been trying to get Arya to shut up with an ounce of fear in her eyes. Instead, she had asked him to teach her how to kill people and they came across a task that actually required _using_ the damn axe, which proved his story to be false. Sandor couldn’t work his way out of this one with words, so he just glared at Arya and pointed at her, wishing he could say something smart in response.

 

Arya grinned at his lack of words, though. “I can do it,” she said, bouncing up from her seat on the ground, and she bounded over to him. “Here, just give me the axe—”

 

Sandor held his hand up to her, pushing her backwards by the shoulder. “No,” Sandor said, “I got this.”

 

“But you can’t even—”

 

“I _got_ this,” Sandor persisted, and he glared at her until she got the picture. Arya narrowed her eyes at him, shook her head as she rolled her eyes, and then turned around to head back to her spot on the ground. She sat down again, keeping her eyes on him to watch him all the while. Arya said nothing else, so Sandor turned back to the log and lifted the axe once more. He took another swing, hitting it this time and splitting it at least three quarters of the way. That was success in his eyes, and he split it the rest of the way with his hands. Sandor picked up the piece of wood and tossed it towards Arya. “One,” he called out, and Arya caught it, starting a pile beside her.

 

Sandor managed to make it through to six pieces with some trouble along the way, but nothing he couldn’t work his way around in due time. It was the seventh piece that gave him most of the trouble. He swung twice, unable to crack the wood with the axe, and he held up the axe to inspect it, wondering if it was dull from all of the whacking so far. It didn’t look dull, though, and he touched his finger to it, cutting it on the axe. It definitely wasn’t dull. Sandor ignored the cut on his finger, despite the fact that it was bleeding, and grabbed the axe handle with both hands again.

 

This time when he swung, the blood from his cut made the handle slippery, and Sandor lost control of it. It slid right off the log and came towards his leg, hitting his shin. Before Sandor knew it, he had let go of the axe, which fell to the ground, and he was on the ground, too. Arya had gasped in horror, running up to his side. Sandor held his leg and looked down at the cut, and Arya ran away from him to grab the first aid kit before she hurried back to his side and kneeled by him. The cut wasn’t too deep, but it was long and it was bleeding badly, and it hurt like hell.

 

Arya fished out some gauze from the kit and tore one of the bandanas off of her arms. Next thing he knew, she pressed the gauze down onto the wound with a firm grip, and Sandor hollered out because that shit _hurt_. Arya glanced over at him, though, making a face.

 

“Quit whining like a little baby,” she snapped, and she placed the bandana over the gauze, looped it underneath his leg, and tied it tight. Sandor yelled out in pain yet again, cursing afterwards. The little girl had no _mercy_. He rolled his head back, staring up at the sky.

 

 _I should have let her cut the logs_ , Sandor thought a little too late.

 

“Can you stand up?” Arya asked, and Sandor looked over at her. She was standing to his left with her hands on her hips, staring down at him. Sandor tried to put weight on his wounded leg, but it _really_ hurt, and he just fell back to the ground again.

 

“Not yet,” he said in a small voice.

 

Arya sighed and rolled her eyes at him. “Okay, I’ll go get help,” she suddenly told Sandor, and she turned away from him to hurry off through the trees.

 

“Hey, wait!” Sandor called out. “Don’t leave me here!”

 

Arya stopped, turning around to look at him again with a quizzical look on her face. “I’m just going to get help. It’s not like _I_ can carry you. You’re ten times my size.”

 

“No, wait, just give me a moment,” Sandor tried to reason with her. “Just give me a moment, and I can walk. Don’t leave.”

 

Arya crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s not like you’re gonna _die_ ,” Arya shot back.

 

“Show a little mercy!” Sandor hollered at her.

 

“You don’t deserve any mercy,” Arya teased. “I ought to let you _suffer_.”

 

“Is this about your sister?” Sandor threw back at her, but he wasn’t hollering anymore. Unbeknownst to him, his voice almost held a whimpering quality to it as he tried to plead with her. “Because, you know, you’ve had a bug up your ass ever since that whole bed incident with Sansa—”

 

“I thought you two made up,” Arya said, dumbfounded at his rambling.

 

“We have, but _you_ haven’t seemed to have grasped that concept yet,” Sandor shot back in that whimpering tone again—and fucking hell, was he _whining_?

 

Arya sighed deeply, rolling her eyes at the sky for the millionth time that day because of him, and walked back over to Sandor. “God, you know, you cry like a little girl,” she snapped at Sandor, and she held out her hand to him. “Come on, get up,” Arya said firmly. Sandor glared at her hand with distrust for a moment, but Arya shook it at him. “Take my hand, and get the hell the up, Sandor. I’m not waiting here all day. Take my hand, or I ditch your ass out here and get someone else to help you.”

 

Sandor kept glaring at her, but he took her hand, and though it hurt like hell, Arya helped pull him to his feet again. He couldn’t put much weight onto his wounded leg, but Arya stood by his right side and let him use her shoulders as a prop to help him walk. They left their supplies out in the woods without a single complaint from Arya about how they were going to lose the game, and with her help, Sandor got back to the main camp grounds. There was a local nurse on the grounds in case of accidents like this, and she took care of everything. Sandor was all patched up and ready to go, and he wanted to leave early today.

 

He met Arya outside of the nurse’s office, and Arya had her arms crossed over her chest again. She gave him an appraising look, nodding her head in satisfaction. “You don’t look dead,” Arya told him. “Mission accomplished?”

 

Sandor eyed her for a moment in silence. “You’re all right, kid,” he finally said, and he ruffled her hair. Arya scrunched up her face, shaking her head away from his hand.

 

“What do I look like?” Arya asked. “A dog?”

 

Sandor started limping down the hallway, though. “A dog in training!” he hollered back to her, but he didn’t hear a response. Though Sandor didn’t see it, Arya was smiling a little reluctantly and shaking her head at him as he walked away.

 

Sandor got to his car and drove himself home—very carefully—and when he got home, he didn’t bother with his usual routine. He closed the door, but he didn’t lock it, and he carefully limped his way into his bedroom, where he fell onto his bed and thought about just passing out for a nap. However, from within his pants pocket, his phone began to buzz on its vibrate setting. Sandor opened his eyes, sighing deeply, and wondered who was calling him. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he glanced at the name and number.

 

It was Sansa.

 

Had it been anyone else on the other end of the line, he would have ignored it, but it was Sansa. The last time Sandor had seen her was a few days ago on the beach, which had probably been one of the single most stressful moments of his entire life. He hadn’t realized until that moment just how much Sansa’s opinion of him mattered to him, and Sandor didn’t remember when her opinion became so damn important to him, anyway. It had just happened somewhere along the way, and he didn’t know how or why.

 

That way she had looked at him, though, like he was some kind of monster—Sandor hadn’t been able to take that, not from her. He, a grown man with a felony record, had cried because of that. He had cried right in front of her, and Sansa had comforted him when she could have turned away from him and told him she never wanted to see him again. She had every right to do just that. Sansa didn’t owe him anything. She had chosen to stay with him, though, despite everything she had learned from someone else’s lips about his past, and Sandor hadn’t expected that. He hadn’t expected the compassion of her touch—or the forgiveness in her embrace. Sandor hadn’t expected her to still care about him in any way humanly possible, but somehow Sansa still cared for him despite it all, and so he had held her for well over an hour, unable to bring himself to let her go.

 

Sandor was trying hard not to think of that now, or he was going to be a mess all over again from the memory alone. He ran his hand over his face, giving it a good rub, before running it through his hair. He had been working everyday since that day at the beach, so there had been no time for the two of them to spend together until today after camp. The downfall to that was Sandor wasn’t really going to be able to go anywhere to meet her or pick her up. He took a deep breath, accepting the call, and brought the phone to his ear. “Hey,” Sandor told her.

 

“Hey,” Sansa said through the line, and he could hear the smile in her soft voice.

 

“I’m out of commission,” he said with a huff of amusement.

 

“What?” Sansa asked, and there was a little laugh on her end.

 

“I hurt my leg at the camp today,” Sandor informed her, “so I can’t really do a whole lot.”

 

“Oh,” she said despondently, and the sad tone in her voice made Sandor want to cheer her up somehow.

 

“But you could still come over,” he said. “You know, if you can find a ride or something.”

 

“I shouldn’t,” Sansa told him, but she sounded hesitant. “You should rest if your leg is hurt—”

 

“No, it’s all right,” Sandor cut her off. “Come on over if you can. It’ll keep me busy. Otherwise, I’ll just fall right asleep.”

 

“Maybe you should sleep,” Sansa said softly, and Sandor could hear the smile once more beyond the words.

 

“Nah,” he said. “I’d rather stay awake.”

 

Sansa laughed on the other end of the line. “Okay,” she finally agreed. “I’ll see if Gendry can bring me over. He’s been my go-to ride lately, anyway.”

 

Sandor actually found himself smiling. Hell, he never smiled all that often, but sometimes for special occasions he managed to make one. “I’ll see you in a bit, then,” he said in a quiet voice.

 

“Sure,” Sansa told him, and Sandor hung up the call. He tossed his phone onto the bed beside him and closed his eyes. A part of him really was tired, though, and closing his eyes didn’t help with that very much. In no time at all, Sandor passed out on top of his bed. He slept rather peacefully, too, until he felt something tickling his chest. Sandor tried to roll away from it, but he hit something, and that caused him to open his eyes abruptly to whatever he had bumped into on his bed.

 

Sansa was sitting there beside him, and when Sandor looked up, she was smiling down at him. Sansa wrinkled her nose at him. “Good morning, sunshine,” she teased, and Sandor closed his eyes and turned his face into his bed, making a deep noise in the back of his throat in protest to being woken up. Finally, though, he rolled back over and looked up at her again, narrowing his eyes.

 

“How’d you get in?” Sandor asked sleepily, and Sansa smiled down at him yet again and leaned forward until her hair nearly hung over him.

 

“Your front door was unlocked,” Sansa whispered, biting down on her lower lip afterwards. Sandor stared at her lips for a moment, wanting to bite down on it himself. He quickly shook that thought from his head.

 

“Oh,” he said, forgetting he hadn’t locked it when he came home today from the camp. Locking his door had been the last thing on his mind and making it to his bed had been the first. Sandor thought about getting up, but he didn’t want to move. When he had fallen onto the bed earlier, his body from the knees up were on the bed, but his legs were bent over the edge and dangling. “I’m immobile,” he complained, and Sansa laughed at him.

 

“Which leg did you hurt?” she asked him, and Sandor pointed to his right leg.

 

“That one—” he began to tell her, but Sansa slid downwards off the bed and disappeared from sight below eye level, and Sandor lifted his head in confusion until he felt her hands carefully rolling up his pants leg. Sandor’s eyes went wide at that.

 

“Hey, whoa—” he said, and he tried to move his leg away from her, but Sansa was insistent. She held his leg in place as she rolled up his pants.

 

“It’ll only take a moment,” her voice said from the foot of the bed, and Sandor tried really hard not to think of the alternative to this situation. He covered his face with his hands, rubbing it really hard to wake himself up further. Sansa’s hands tickled against his legs as she ran her fingers over the skin surrounding his bandage, sending little pleasant tingles through his nerves. Sandor pushed himself upright.

 

“Hey, enough with that,” Sandor told her, and he reached out to grab one of her arms, but he stopped because Sansa looked upwards to meet his gaze, and it froze him in place. There was such an expression of concern spread across her face and sitting there in her eyes, and he felt her fingers graze against his leg yet again as she gazed up at him. Sandor briefly shut his eyes before reopening them. She really needed to stop doing that.

 

“How deep is it?” Sansa asked softly, and she rested her chin on his knee as she looked up at him.

 

“It’s not that deep,” Sandor admitted, finding his voice soft as well. Sansa’s hand was slowly running up and down his leg, and despite his wound there, the light brushes of her hand were pleasant. He closed his eyes briefly again before forcing himself to open them. “Sansa, stop that,” he murmured, and she locked gazes with him for a moment, her hand freezing in place.

 

Suddenly, she pulled it away and removed her chin from his knee. “I’m sorry,” she said, almost robotically. Sandor found himself frowning.

 

He leaned forward and took her by the chin, gently lifting Sansa’s face, and then he urged her head upward until she had to stand because of the direction of his hand. Sansa slowly rose with the motion of his hand on her chin, and Sandor wrapped his free arm around her waist, putting his hand on the small of her back and pulling her closer to him until she was between his legs. His other hand was still on her chin, making sure she looked him in the eyes.

 

“Stop apologizing,” Sandor told her firmly, and the hand on her chin slid behind her neck as Sansa nodded quickly at him, and he pulled her closer. Their lips touched in a gentle press at first until Sandor parted his mouth against hers. Sansa willingly opened her lips for him, and Sandor deepened the kiss, enjoying the feel and the taste of her mouth. She was softer than any other woman he had ever kissed before—and sweeter, too, he even thought. There was something about her that was new to him, something that made him feel like he hadn’t kissed a woman before, even though he knew he had—he relished in every contact of her tongue with his, every soft moan she made in response, and the smell of her surrounding him. Sansa smelled so delicate, like flowers and femininity and innocence.

 

Sandor pulled her with him to the bed as he lay back down, and Sansa followed the guidance of his hands. He ran his fingers upward from her neck to the back of her head, threading them through her hair as he went, and Sansa shivered above him at his touch, making a little noise in the back of her throat. His other hand was on her back, gently rubbing up and down. Sandor kissed her unhurriedly, too hurt and too tired to be rough or to have any desire to be, but that wasn’t entirely true either. There were other reasons, too, and one of them was he didn’t want to scare her again. He didn’t want her to look at him with that look on her face, horrified with him and with his actions, so he reined himself in for her.

 

Every movement of his hands and mouth were slow with her, but Sansa seemed to get a little impatient above him. Sandor felt her wiggling a little bit, and then she settled her legs on either side of him and propped herself on her arms. She pulled back from Sandor briefly to look him in the face. Her lips were red and swollen, but oh so intoxicating to look at in their current state. Sandor wanted to kiss her again, but Sansa looked like she wanted to say something, so he kept his head against the bed.

 

“If you want,” Sansa whispered softly, her blue eyes shining down at him in the half-light failing outside of his window, “we can use teeth again, if you like that.”

 

Sandor felt himself narrowing his eyes. He didn’t want her saying that if she didn’t like it. It wasn’t like Sansa was his stress ball or his punching bag to use or abuse as he pleased. If she didn’t like that sort of thing, then Sandor was just going to have to get used to being without it. He shook his head at her. “No,” Sandor said firmly, “I don’t want to do that with you if you don’t like it.”

 

Sansa’s eyes veered away from his, looking downward at his mouth. “But,” she began even quieter than before, “I did like it. I just—I was scared because you didn’t talk to me about it first.” Her eyes met his again, and Sandor could see she was being truthful with him. “If you had warned me first, maybe it would have gone differently that night, but we didn’t talk about it and that was the only problem I had with it.”

 

Sandor swallowed past a lump in his throat. A part of him still wanted to say no because he wasn’t sure just how honest she was being with him, but the bigger part of him entertained the idea of being rough with Sansa and her actually enjoying it this time—and there was no danger of it going too far, not with his leg in the condition it was in today. Things were safe like this. The timing was perfect, really. Sandor closed his eyes, debating it in his head. He thought about the soft, slow movements of their mouths just moments ago, but he realized he eventually always wanted to push it further.

 

He might as well take the chance while it was being offered so willingly.

 

Sandor looked Sansa in the eyes, reaching up to hold her chin. “We’ll try it,” he said softly, “but if anything bothers you or you don’t like it, just say ‘stop’ loud enough for me to hear, and I’ll stop.” His eyes searched hers for a moment, looking for any doubt or reluctance, but he saw none. Sansa’s eyes glittered with desire, and he wanted to drown in them. She nodded her head at him.

 

“Okay,” Sansa answered in a whisper, and Sandor pulled her down to his lips, kissing her again. It was more desirous this time than the last, a bit headier, and he turned his head at a different angle, delving his tongue into her mouth. Sansa moaned again, the sound reverberating into his mouth, and Sandor’s hand gripped the back of her head a little tighter as he groaned back in response. His teeth came down on her bottom lip, biting and pulling back, and Sansa moaned at that, too. He kissed her again, and she surprised him—Sansa bit down on his lower lip this time, nipping at it before letting it go. Sandor felt a spike of pleasure at that, and he kissed her harder all of a sudden, his head rising up from the bed to meet her.

 

Sansa bit him again, and Sandor groaned deeply—grabbing a fistful of her hair, he pulled her head back and away from him. Sansa’s mouth parted, and she made a sudden noise, but Sandor couldn’t tell if she liked it or didn’t like it, so he waited, and Sansa tilted her head back with his hand, arching her throat before him. She liked it. Sandor gripped harder on her hair, pulling more. Sansa moaned aloud through her open mouth, and Sandor rose from the bed to kiss her neck. He licked her, tasting her skin—salty and sweet—and then he bit down on her arched neck, but not so hard to leave bruises this time. Sansa’s hands gripped the bed sheets beside his arms, her fingers flexing open and then clutching upon the fabric.

 

He assaulted her neck where he could, sometimes kissing her, sometimes dragging his tongue along her delicious skin, and sometimes digging his teeth into her flesh. Eventually, Sandor released her hair, and Sansa took his face by both sides with her hands, kissing him heatedly. He wrapped his arms around her body, his hands resting on her back, his nails digging into her skin through the fabric of her shirt. This was good enough for him. Just this kissing, with no expectations further. Sandor wasn’t an animal. He didn’t _need_ anything further. Sure, he might have wanted it from time to time, and he had gotten carried away that once, but he didn’t need it. It was optional, not a requirement. Besides, it had been quite a long time since Sandor had been with a woman anyway, so it wasn’t like he hadn’t learnt a lot of patience along the way.

 

Sansa slowed down, though, coming to a point where she wanted to stop. Sandor kissed her gently, lifting a hand to her temple and brushing her hair behind her ear. Sansa shivered at the contact of his fingers curling around her ear, and she moved her lips against his once, twice, three more times before a tender moan wracked her throat, and she pulled away from him. She gazed down at him with darkened eyes, darker than any blue he had ever seen, which was strange, considering how bright her eyes always were. Sandor dragged his thumb along her cheekbone, and he reached up to place a soft kiss upon the tip of her nose.

 

When his head touched the bed again, Sansa was staring at him with this look in her eyes. He didn’t know it, had no idea what it was. Sandor had never seen anything like it before. She reached forward with a delicate hand and traced her fingers along the scars on the left side of his face. Sandor felt his chest seize up at that, wondering why she was touching him there. Nobody had ever touched him there before, and Sandor wasn’t sure if he liked it—until Sansa asked him a question out of the blue.

 

“How did you get your scars?” she inquired in a whisper, and Sandor felt his throat seize up next—he didn’t want to talk about that now. Anything but that. It would ruin the moment. It would steal away the pleasant and peaceful feeling that had settled over him in the aftermath of their physical contact. Sandor shook his head, refusing to answer.

 

“Some other time,” he told her, and he shook his head at her again. “Not now,” Sandor added quickly after that, and he pulled Sansa down to his chest, wrapping his arms around her smaller frame, enjoying the feel of her warm body above him. With one hand on her back and the other reaching up to her head again, Sandor just lay there on his bed and held Sansa against him. She snuggled her head just under his upon his chest, her arms pressed between them and enveloped in his embrace as well. Sansa took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, adjusting herself above him slightly until she was comfortable.

 

Sandor gently ran his hand over her hair, remembering how she had done that with his on the beach, as his other hand lightly gripped at her back.

 

Sandor didn’t know what he was getting himself into with Sansa, but he knew he was getting in deep. That confrontation they’d had on the beach a few days ago hadn’t helped matters anymore either. Sansa was young and sweet and innocent, and she should have ran away from him after hearing all of what she had heard—and Sandor didn’t need to hear it repeated to know what was said—but here she was, having chosen to come over to his apartment when she could have been doing something else with her time and holding onto him like there was nowhere else in the world that she wanted to be but right here with him.

 

Sandor clutched onto Sansa a little tighter, afraid to let go.

 

 


	32. He May Conceal a King in His Hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** At the end of this chapter, I’ve included a list of songs so far whose lyrics inspired the chapter names, covering Chapter 23 through Chapter 32!

_* * *_

 

When Loras got out of the shower, he put a towel to his head and rubbed it vigorously a few times back and forth before removing it. He shook his head, letting his hair fly loose. The mirror was misted over from the hot water that had been running, so Loras ran his hand over the glass to clear it. He stared at his reflection for a moment with an intensive gaze as he surveyed himself for no particular reason, narrowing his eyes at the person looking back at him from the mirror. Loras wasn’t looking at his hair, or his skin, or his eyes, or checking for imperfections. He brought his hand to his face, touching one side before touching the other, and he looked down at the sink. He was wondering just how far he was going to let himself take this. He was wondering just how far he was going to let Renly take this.

 

Loras leaned forward over the sink, suddenly needing a splash of cold water against his face. He turned on the faucet, running the chilled water, and reached down with cupped hands to grab two handfuls and throw them against his face. It felt heavenly against his skin, and it served to wake him up some more. It was really late into the night, though Loras was used to late nights. Because of Renly, Loras rarely got to bed before three or four in the morning unless he had an early shift at work. Loras, however, normally worked evening and night hours because it was more convenient for him than daytime shifts. He lifted his head, gazing at his reflection again.

 

His face looked tired. He and Renly had been arguing nonstop since that night in Maegor’s Holdfast after Loras went to drop Sandor off at his pub. Ten years together, and they had never fought like this before. Sure, they had disagreements from time to time, and they bickered like any normal couple, but this was the type of full-blown shouting match and head-to-head that usually led to divorce for most married couples. Loras and Renly weren’t married, not that they couldn’t be, but they chose not to be. At least not yet, anyway, though for all intents and purposes they might as well have been married for everything that both of them had put into their relationship together.

 

However, Loras hadn’t even been sleeping in the same bed as Renly for the past six days. That was how bad the fighting had gotten between them over this whole ordeal. At first, they slept on opposite sides of the bed. Then, Loras had outright refused to even share Renly’s bed. He had expected Renly to get mad at that, but Renly hadn’t shouted a single word. The look on Renly’s face had been wounded and hurt, but Renly refused to give up his pride for Loras in that moment, and so the fighting turned into silence after that. Utter, deathly silence—and that had been worse than the shouting. The shouting Loras could take, but the silence. The silence killed him.

 

He wanted to go to Renly. He wanted to hug him and hold him and tell him everything was all right between them and that everything would be okay, but Loras didn’t want Renly thinking that this was okay or that Loras would agree to it. Loras had to stand his ground. He had to be the wall standing strong and holding everything together. He had to be the anchor in the storm. He had to be the bulwark of the fortress. He had to be the voice of reason sometimes to Renly’s occasional fits of madness—not that Renly was mad or anything like that, but Renly was an excitable fellow who let himself get carried away with the slightest breeze. Renly was the kite in the relationship, and Loras was the kid holding tightly onto its string, trying to ground it from flying off into the torrent of wind that whipped it through the sky above him.

 

Loras loved Renly with all of his heart, but Loras was nothing if he was not true to himself. Loras had never let the underbelly of their business drag him under like he had seen it do to a lot of other people. Loras was a man of principle, and in many ways, so was Renly. However, there was a price to power. Renly hadn’t always been this way, but once he had become a part of this darker world they now both operated in together, Renly had learned the hard way that power wasn’t all about hosting dinner parties and feasts, dancing and merry-making, and making a plethora of friends. Renly had been a lot more carefree in those days when they were both younger and the world was a dance to them, but time and this lifestyle that they lived had taken a toll on Renly.

 

Renly wasn’t as strong as Loras, and half of the time, Loras was the only thing grounding Renly to some sensibility of reason.

 

It wasn’t Renly’s fault, though. It was this lifestyle that they lived, working under the table to make the city something it was meant to be rather than a cesspool of corruption and greed, but the problem with that was looking into the abyss of corruption and dealing with it day to day meant absorbing some of it into you. If Renly wasn’t careful, he was slowly going to become the very thing that he hated the most—and this was exactly what Loras was trying to prevent from happening.

 

Despite the fact that what they did was technically called organized crime, Renly followed a strict moral code, and unlike a lot of other people in a similar position as him, Renly absolutely refused to do things that hurt the welfare of the city—like, for instance, trafficking in drugs. Most of the time, Renly shut down such operations whenever they cropped up, and Renly did it because he had a vision to change Kingsland. He had a vision to make it a better city, not worse, and this was the very reason why Loras stood by his side through all of it. Because, in his heart, Renly was a good person—he was one of the best in the world. Perhaps Loras was biased in that assessment, but he would follow Renly into hell if it meant that together they would accomplish something good, even if it was through dishonest means.

 

Loras believed in Renly, and he wanted to continue believing in Renly, but sometimes Renly made that really hard to do.

 

Wrapping a blue towel around his waist, Loras walked out of the bathroom and into the large bedroom beyond its threshold. The penthouse he shared with Renly was huge place with numerous rooms, and Loras was staying in one of the extra bedrooms right now. As he was cutting out the light and leaving the bathroom, Loras noticed the sliding door to the balcony was open. It had been closed when Loras went to take a shower. The cold night breeze blew in through the gap, causing the sheer curtains to swirl about in an eerie dance as Loras’s bare shoulders shivered at the sudden touch of cold upon them.

 

As the curtains lifted and swirled in the night air, Loras saw Renly standing there on the balcony with his back to the room, leaning his arms against the railing.

 

It was an admission of defeat.

 

Loras found himself taking a deep breath, covering his mouth with his hand as the back of his eyes stung with tears. Thankfully, Renly wasn’t looking, and Loras quickly steeled himself against the onslaught of emotion. He had to be the rock. Renly was the crashing waves. Loras couldn’t be the waves as well. He had to be the steady one. He grabbed for a robe and slipped it on, discarding his towel onto the floor. Loras tied the robe around his waist, looking up at Renly’s back. Slowly, Loras made his way over to the balcony.

 

He passed over the threshold of the sliding glass doors into the bare night air, feeling instantly naked despite the robe around his body. It was something about the open air, Loras thought, that made him feel like he was standing on the edge of a precipice, hanging over something infinite and scary and unknown. He slowly walked up to Renly’s side, not yet ready to touch him. He was going to let Renly know he was there, and he was going to give Renly a chance to speak first.

 

The silence seemed to stretch on between them, and Loras looked ahead at the sight before them. The lights of Kingsland shone below—a million streetlights, house lights, porch lights, bar lights, and traffic lights in colors of yellow, orange, white, gold, red, green, blue, and silver, all mingling together in a beautiful array of art. This was their city, Loras thought, as he looked out at it. The same thought he knew was in Renly’s head whenever they stood upon these balconies in their home and looked beyond its borders to the city below. They were high above it to watch over it as they should have been.

 

Together, they could make the world a better place. Loras always believed that, and he always would continue to believe that. He would help Renly accomplish whatever needed to be accomplished to make that so—without scaring or hurting an innocent girl in the process. Sansa Stark was one of the million lights down there, one of the million lights they were trying to make this city a better place for, one of the million lights they were trying to protect, and pulling her into this defeated the entire purpose of everything they were trying to do in the first place and dishonored everything about their modus operandi. If Renly couldn’t understand that, then he was further gone than Loras ever dreamed of him becoming, even in his darkest nightmares.

 

Yet, a part of him knew, Renly was not that far gone.

 

Amidst all of his thoughts, Loras noticed Renly shifting out of the corner of his eyes, and he turned his head slightly to look at him. Loras saw Renly open his mouth, and then he finally spoke to break the silence weighing down between them.

 

“You know,” Renly began slowly, his gaze still on the city lights below, “every time I fight with you, it’s because you’re right and I’m too stubborn to admit it.”

 

Loras felt a tender smile threatening its way onto his face, lifting the corner of his mouth upward. “You’ve always been stubborn,” Loras said softly. “It’s one of those really annoying things about you that I sort of love.”

 

Renly was quiet again, but there was a brief smirk that had crept upon his lips before fading away to make way for a more serious expression. A thoughtful look passed over Renly’s face, and he furrowed his brow as he looked out on the city below.

 

“I won’t do it because you’re right, it’s wrong,” Renly admitted, and the admission came without any trouble. There was no reluctance behind the words he spoke, no hesitation before they came out. “But I would still like to talk to her,” Renly continued reasonably, “if only to see if I can’t gleam some information from her about Sandor. He’s a different man now than what he used to be. He’s not the same Sandor we once knew. Maybe she knows what makes him tick now. I need to know what to offer him to get him to say yes, and Sansa might be able to tell us that.” Renly turned sideways against the balcony’s railing to face Loras, though he still leaned one forearm upon the railing itself. “Tell me you are okay with this,” Renly said, though it was silently a question without being posed as a question. Renly was still seeking Loras’s approval for this idea without demanding that it be accepted without challenge.

 

Loras felt himself raise his chin. He was proud of Renly for this progress. It was far more mature than what had happened between them that night at the club. Sometimes Renly let his temper get away from him, and then it took control of the situation above everything else. In moments like that, Loras had no choice but to walk away until Renly gained his senses back. He had known him long enough to know that.

 

Asking Loras for his opinion was a big step forward for Renly, especially after the way he had been acting ever since they began fighting over this whole mess in the first place.

 

“I am okay with this,” Loras answered him, but he gave Renly a stern look. “As long as I get to be there with you,” he added, and he was silent for a moment to see how Renly would react to this, but Renly was still perfectly calm and normal, and that relaxed Loras even further. Loras’s mouth quirked upward into a full smile this time. “I want to make sure you don’t do anything stupid accidentally. You are so good at that, after all,” Loras teased him.

 

For the first time in the longest time—ever since they had begun fighting, really—Renly slowly smiled in response to Loras’s words. The warmth was back in his eyes again, and Loras dared to cross the distance between them, though it was only a foot or two, to take Renly by the sides of his face and kiss him tenderly. Renly’s arms came around Loras’s waist, and they kissed slowly out there on the balcony above the world. Though all of the world surrounded them in that moment, Loras felt nothing but the feel of Renly’s lips against his own. Not even the breeze could sway him to pay attention to it, for all that Loras cared about was right here in his hands.

 

They walked blindly back into the bedroom, slowly making their way to the bed. They made love for the first time in two weeks, which had been two weeks too long, and Loras held onto Renly afterwards, his mind still awake and unable to rest. Renly, however, easily fell asleep there in his arms. Loras looked over at his lover’s face and watched as he breathed slowly in and out in his slumber, gently touching Renly’s cheek with his fingers and stroking the soft skin where it met the scratchy touch of his short-trimmed beard. Renly looked so peaceful in his sleep, all of the worries and cares of the world gone from his face, and the beautiful qualities that Loras had fallen in love with were still there, still living inside and out of Renly. Loras hoped he never lost those, but sometimes he grew afraid of the prospect. Renly wasn’t as strong as he used to be, and Loras found himself gripping onto him with a slightly stronger arm as the other man slept on unawares.

 

Loras was glad he had gotten through to Renly, but he was also afraid of what the future would bring for them. Next time, what if it wasn’t so easy? This time had been the worst of them all, like it was slowly getting harder and harder over time to get through to Renly—and what if they did accomplish everything they had set out to do from the beginning? What if Tywin Lannister fell, and all of his family along with him, what would happen to Renly, then? Would he become another Tywin Lannister? Would the power get to his head, or would he become the thing they always talked about in their childish dreams and plans from their youth?

 

As much as he searched the inside of his heart, Loras found the silence in answer to his questions to be the most disturbing thing of all, and the onset of tears was fresh upon him once more. They stung at the back of his eyes for the second time that night.

 

Loras found himself holding tighter onto Renly, trying to be the little kid holding onto that kite in so much danger of being ripped away by the torrent of wind surrounding them, as Renly slept on in ignorance of Loras’s thoughts and internal struggle. It wasn’t something that Loras could explain to Renly, no matter how much he wanted to sometimes. It wasn’t something that Renly would ever understand or even dare to take seriously. He would just laugh at it like Loras was being silly or stupid, and then he would turn away shaking his head, still laughing. That was Renly’s problem sometimes. He never took enough things seriously enough, but he wouldn’t be Renly if he didn’t.

 

Loras, however, would continue to be the rock. He would continue to be the anchor. He would continue to be the bulwark, the defense, the support, and the strength. He would never leave Renly’s side, even if everything came crashing down around them into a pile of charred ashes. Renly was the sun in his sky, the only source of light in the darkness of this world, and even if the moon blotted out Renly’s shine, Loras would still be there, underneath it, smiling up that sky—knowing no matter what that Renly was still there somewhere beneath it all.

 

“I love you,” Loras said to Renly’s sleeping form, and he leaned forward to kiss Renly on the forehead as he slept peacefully beside him. Renly stirred somewhat in his sleep, curling one of his arms around Loras, and easing some of the ache in Loras’s heart, but it never completely left him.

 

Loras closed his eyes and said a silent prayer in his head, hoping it was enough to save Renly—enough to save them.

 

He pressed his forehead to Renly’s, and eventually, Loras fell asleep at last.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 23\. Shedding Light and Righting Wrongs – “California 37” by Train  
> 24\. The Wolf’s Gonna Blow It Down – “Brick by Boring Brick” by Paramore  
> 25\. Make It Feel Right When It’s Wrong Like Lying – “Lollipop” by Framing Hanley  
> 26\. I’ll Never Wake Up Without an Overdose – “Comatose” by Skillet  
> 27\. I’m in Tight with a Demon Called Deception – “Demon Called Deception” by Grant Lee Buffalo  
> 28\. Brother, Nothing Here is Any Good – “Demon Called Deception” by Grant Lee Buffalo  
> 29\. I Got Nothing, No Magic Words – “I Got Nothin’” by Darius Rucker  
> 30\. The Light from Inside Her – “All for a Woman” by The Airborne Toxic Event  
> 31\. I’m Not Getting Tired of You – “Tired of You” by Foo Fighters  
> 32\. He May Conceal a King in His Hand – “Shape of My Heart” by Sting


	33. Russian Roulette

_* * *_

 

Sansa felt a laugh bubbling up in her throat. “You’re doing it wrong,” she said, a sing-song quality to her voice. She was teasing him.

 

“I’m not doing it wrong,” Sandor protested.

 

Sansa snorted all of a sudden, and then she was covering her mouth and nose, trying to force down her laughter. She tilted her head back to gaze upwards at the ceiling, her face turning red from the effort she was putting into it. She was breathing hard into her hands, practically wheezing.

 

“Are you _laughing_ at me?”

 

Sansa started shaking her head really fast, still wheezing as her chest shook with silent laughter. She removed her hands from her mouth to speak. “No,” she said loudly, taking a deep breath, but clearly, she _was_ laughing at him. Her head was still tilted backwards. “No, I’m not laughing at you—” she tried to say, but Sansa had to cover up her mouth again as another bout of laughter abruptly overtook her once more.

 

“You’re _laughing_ at me,” Sandor said, sounding wounded, and Sansa just lost it. She burst out laughing so loudly this time that her head flew all the way back and hit his shoulder behind her, releasing all of her pent up glee towards the ceiling as her entire body shook from it. Sandor was sitting behind her—under her, really—because she was sitting on his lap. His hands were suddenly on her sides now, digging his fingers into the ticklish and sensitive flesh there and making her tremble with even more laughter.

 

“If you’re going to laugh at me,” Sandor said to her, speaking into her ear, “then I’m going to give you a _reason_ to laugh.”

 

Sansa’s eyes went wide all of a sudden, and Sandor started tickling her. She squealed out loud, trying to wiggle out of his grasp, but it was quite useless because she was sitting in his lap and his arms were on either side of her, locking her in place. Still, Sansa tried, ending up halfway in his lap and halfway on the floor, squirming all the while, until her bottom finally hit the floor, but Sandor wasn’t giving up. He bent over and continued his assault on her sides, and Sansa screamed out, “Uncle! _Uncle_!”

 

“Do I _look_ like your uncle?” Sandor shot back, and Sansa screamed out with mirth yet again, laughing and trying to wiggle away from him.

 

“Please, stop!” she begged, shaking all over. “I can’t—please! I—can’t breathe!”

 

Sandor finally stopped his assault, but Sansa didn’t get up from the floor. She was breathing so hard, trying to regain her composure, and she turned around to look up at Sandor. Sansa grinned at him, unable to stop herself, her eyes glittering with amusement. “You are so . . . technologically . . . disadvantaged,” she managed to say, leaning forward and lifting up her chin as she continued grinning. Sansa had been trying to show him how to play a game on her phone, but Sandor clearly had no idea what he was doing, and it had been the _funniest_ thing in the world to Sansa.

 

Sandor wrinkled his nose at her. “You watch yourself, woman,” he warned.

 

Sansa’s eyes went wide, her mouth opening as if in a fake gasp. “Ah, I’m a woman now?” she asked teasingly, leaning forward some more, but she was just joking with him. However, Sansa had picked up on the sudden change in his vocabulary. Sandor had never called a ‘woman’ before, and Sansa wondered if he even noticed the change in his vocabulary himself. He had referred to her as a girl for the longest time, and now it was _woman_.

 

Sandor’s eyes narrowed her, darkening somewhat, as he tilted his head to the side. “I’ll call you what I want to call you,” he said in response, but Sansa didn’t want to let it go that easily. She had known Sandor for a little over three months, and she was used to him by now, which also meant she was comfortable with him. When Sansa got comfortable with people, she stopped worrying so much about boundaries and limitations and she also started letting her mouth run away from her a little bit more often. Not only had she grown comfortable with Sandor, but they had been seeing each other for a little over a month—getting to know each other, hanging out at his apartment, going on dates here and there, and making out a lot.

 

Sansa especially liked the making out, and lately, her mind started to wander even more. Sometimes she thought about how it would be like to go a little bit further with him and what it would be like, but she was too timid to act on it, so she just entertained them all as private thoughts and fantasies, which was all right with her. Sandor never made a move to go further than kissing, and Sansa didn’t think he was going to make a move beyond that anytime soon. He seemed pleasantly content with just kissing as well, and so things stayed at their leisurely pace between the two of them. It was unhurried, but it was nice.

 

Despite the darker things she had learned about him, Sansa tried her best to push them from her mind. Whenever she spent time with Sandor, she saw that he was nothing like whomever he used to be long before she ever met him. After their talk on the beach, there had been a few moments where Sansa had found herself breaking down and crying over what she had heard from Margaery, but then she would think about all of the good things about Sandor, about how he cried on the beach as well, and how tender he was with her in the days that followed afterwards. It became harder for Sansa to continually be upset, so eventually, she refused to let herself think about those things at all.

 

That didn’t mean they weren’t somewhere still in the back of her mind, lingering under the surface from time to time. They were there, often being ignored, but sometimes they came to the forefront of her mind unbidden. Sansa had learned to push them back to the best of her ability, though, and on this particular day, they hadn’t cropped up at all. Not yet, anyway.

 

She grinned up at Sandor for his remark, and then she leaned closer to him while she still sat on the floor and he sat in the chair. Her hands came down on his knees, and Sandor’s eyes dropped from her face to her hands. Slowly but deliberately, Sansa ran her hands from his knees up toward his thighs, and her body moved forward with her hands until she was between his legs. Her hands paused halfway past his knees, though, not going too far. Sansa tilted her head back as she looked up at him. “When did I become a _woman_?” she asked teasingly, her eyes still glittering with that same mischievous look again.

 

Sandor ignored her question in favor of one of his own. It was something he liked to do when he didn’t want to answer something. “When do people play stupid games like ‘Angry Birds’?” he asked, and Sansa couldn’t stop herself from laughing fresh all over again.

 

“It’s so _easy_ ,” Sansa insisted, patting his legs. “I can’t believe you don’t know how to _do_ it.”

 

“I don’t play games,” Sandor said defensively, despite the fact that he had agreed to try it after Sansa begged him for about an hour to give it a go.

 

“You just played that one!” Sansa protested.

 

Sandor leaned forward and grabbed her by the chin with gentle fingers. “Stop arguing with me, _woman_ ,” he shot back, but his eyes were glittering with that same mischief that was inside of hers as well. He kissed her, then, to shut her up—and it worked. Sansa released a little surprised moan at first, but she melted against his lips and all thoughts of talking fled her mind. They kissed like that for some time until Sansa’s knees began to hurt from kneeling on the floor, and she broke the kiss to get up in the chair with him again, positioning her knees on either side of him and sitting down.

 

Sansa smiled at him instead of kissing him again, and she reached forward with both hands to play with his hair and run her fingers through it. Sandor liked it when she played with his hair; he never said it out loud, but she could tell, because he would often close his eyes and lean his head back to enjoy it. He was doing that now, and Sansa grinned at it. She leaned forward while his eyes were closed and placed a soft kiss against his lips, and Sandor reached up a hand to her neck and returned the kiss. When she pulled away from him, he hazily opened his eyes to look up at her.

 

These daytime moments with Sandor weren’t going to last for much longer, Sansa thought with a sad look creeping onto her face. School was starting back in less than a week, and it was her final year. She would be attending classes during the day, and he would sleeping from his late nights at work or heading out to work shortly before she even got home for the day. Sansa had been trying to piece together a way for them to see each other just as often as now, but it simply wasn’t possible. There were the weekends, but Sandor worked every weekend because that was when the real crowds came to the pub. It left only his days off or really late at night, but Sandor didn’t like her coming over late at night. Maybe he would make an exception for it now that she was going to be going back to school in a few days.

 

However, Sandor noticed the change in the look on her face, and it urged a question out of his throat. “What’s the matter?” he asked in a low voice, and Sansa shook her head with a soft smile on her face.

 

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said. “I was just thinking about how school is starting back in a few days, and us finding time to spend together is going to be hard.”

 

At the mention of school, Sandor slowly closed his eyes again. Sansa felt his sigh rather than heard it, and she found herself frowning. They hadn’t talked much about school ever since they started officially seeing each other this past month, and this had only been the second time it was mentioned and Sandor had the same reaction to it both times. He never sighed at the mention of it when they were just friends, and it started to bug Sansa. Did he still have a problem with her going to school, or did mentioning it obligatorily make him think of how young she was and did _that_ still bother him?

 

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked softly, pushing his question back at him.

 

“Nothing,” Sandor said, keeping his head leaned backwards against the chair. He opened his eyes again, but he was staring at the ceiling. “I keep forgetting you still have school, that’s all.”

 

“Is that a bad thing?” she pushed further, and Sandor finally lifted his head to look at her. His eyes gave nothing away.

 

“I didn’t say that,” he told her.

 

Sansa touched the side of his head with her fingers, gently running them along his temple. “But were you thinking it?”

 

Sandor said nothing, which meant he was thinking it and he didn’t want to admit it out loud to her. It always confused Sansa. She never understood how those things about her could bother him, and yet he still spent time with her, still kissed her, still had some semblance of attachment to her. Sansa didn’t know how far Sandor’s feelings for her went because he never talked about them, but something was there. If she said one little word called ‘school,’ though, Sandor acted like for all of five seconds that she was twelve instead of seventeen as an uncomfortable look passed over his face.

 

“You’re confusing,” she suddenly said out loud, and Sansa wondered when she had gotten so bold. She had never said that out loud before.

 

“What’s confusing?” Sandor asked her.

 

Sansa leaned closer to him. “You’ve done a lot worse things than secretly see a seventeen-year-old _woman_ ,” she said, teasing him still with what he had called her earlier. Despite her somewhat serious words, a smile had crept upon her face as she said them.

 

Sandor looked thoughtful for a moment instead of reproached, which made her smile grow more. “You know, you’re right about that,” he admitted slowly. “I attacked your sister with a paintball gun and a foam axe. That was really uncalled for.”

 

Sansa gasped aloud. She had never heard of _this_ before. “What did you do to my sister?” Sansa demanded as she gently slapped his chest, but she was laughing along with it, so it wasn’t so bad.

 

“Nothing she didn’t do to herself,” Sandor said pointedly.

 

“What do you mean? Why did you attack her with a paintball gun and a foam _axe_?”

 

“Because she was being an annoying little shit,” Sandor told Sansa, “and she put on a song performance to mock me from some Disney mermaid movie.”

 

Sansa knew exactly which movie he was talking about, and she was trying really hard not to burst out laughing. “Which song?” she ventured slowly, bringing her hand to her mouth to try and prevent herself from laughing again.

 

“I don’t know,” Sandor said. “Some crab song about kissing.”

 

Sansa couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing again, bringing her arms to her chest as she did so. Sandor must have thought she was laughing at him, though, because he wrapped his arms around her body and pulled her to him, crushing her against his chest.

 

“Are you _laughing_ at me again?” Sandor asked her, his voice amused but dangerously low, and Sansa quickly shook her head.

 

“No, no, no, I promise—”

 

But her arguing was no use. Sandor started tickling her again, and Sansa squealed out loud at the sudden attack, and she tried to block his hands, but she couldn’t stop him. He was faster than her and stronger, and he pretty much got her everywhere he wanted to get her, and Sansa could do nothing but laugh and squeal and try to wiggle away from his hands. Sandor was _merciless_.

 

However, he saved her from his tickling when he grabbed her all of a sudden around her waist and stood up as he hoisted her over his shoulder. Sansa was still laughing, despite the fact that she was practically hanging upside down behind him and he wasn’t tickling her anymore. Sandor carried her from his living room down to the hallway, and then she looked around as he passed by the threshold of his bedroom. Sandor must have completely forgotten about the bedroom rule because he didn’t follow it anymore.

 

Sansa gasped as he tossed her from his shoulder onto the bed instead of putting her down carefully, and she bounced at the sudden compact, laughing and trying to steady herself in place. Sandor was already on the bed, though, and before Sansa knew it, he was already on top of her, too. He propped his arms on either side of her, and then he leaned down and captured her lips in a kiss. Sansa lifted her arms from the bed to wrap them around him and return it with the same fervor, her hands running along his upper back.

 

It wasn’t until his mouth left hers and trailed down her jaw to her neck that Sansa’s thoughts started to wander, and not in the good way. Suddenly, here on his bed, with his mouth on her neck and his weight above her, she began to wonder why he liked being so rough and when he had decided that was what he liked with women. His hands grabbed her wrists one at a time, uncurling them from his shoulders and pinning them down to the bed, and his teeth bit down on her neck and scraped along her flesh. Sansa liked it, but because of her newfound thoughts, she also didn’t like it at the same time.

 

Margaery’s words came to mind once more, reminding Sansa of just where Sandor had been before he had met her. _Sandor was like, ‘I have,’_ she remembered hearing in Margaery’s voice. Sansa didn’t know how long ago it was or if it was recent, or how many times he had done it. She just knew he _had_ done it because of what Loras had told Margaery, and with these new thoughts, Sansa didn’t want Sandor’s teeth or mouth on her anymore. She had never really thought about it until now, but Sandor had been with prostitutes before, and the first thing that came to Sansa’s mind when she heard the word ‘prostitutes’ was STDs. Suddenly, this whole biting thing didn’t seem so safe anymore.

 

“Sandor, stop, please,” Sansa quickly called out loud enough for him to hear, her gaze looking up at the ceiling. Abruptly, Sandor stopped what he was doing on her neck, and he pulled back from Sansa to look at her face. His hands let go of her wrists, propping themselves against the bed on either side of her. Sansa was afraid to look at him at first, afraid he would see her eyes and know her thoughts immediately, so she gave herself a moment to regain her composure before lowering her gaze to his and meeting it.

 

He wasn’t angry. God, he was never angry, but his concern was there as always, wondering what he had done to make her uncomfortable. Sansa brought one of her hands to her neck to press it there, trying to think of how hard he had bitten her—it hadn’t felt that hard, and she didn’t feel any marks forming on her skin. Sandor’s eyes fell, darkening, as his head tilted to the side.

 

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he asked, seeing her hand on her neck.

 

Sansa shook her head, but she didn’t remove her hand from her throat either. “No,” she said softly, “no, you didn’t hurt me.” Silently, she wondered if she should even ask the question that was on her mind. It was such an awkward question, and it could very well upset him, but she had a right to know, didn’t she? If they were going to be involved like this, it was something she had every right to know and ask him about whether he liked it or not. The thing was Sansa had never approached this topic before, and she didn’t know the proper way to handle it.

 

“Is something wrong?” Sandor finally asked this time, and judging by the sound of his voice, he sensed something was definitely wrong.

 

Sansa scooted upwards away from him, pushing herself upright on the bed. Sandor followed suit and did the same, sitting upright a few feet away from her. He made no move to cross the distance between them and close it, but he kept his eyes on her. Sansa tried to think of how to say this, opening her mouth and finding no words at first. She closed it again until she gained enough courage to just blurt it out.

 

“Can I ask you something personal?” Sansa began, but Sandor looked completely unaffected by the question.

 

“Sure,” he said.

 

“It has to do with something Margaery said . . . ”

 

His lips tightened together, and his expression hardened at the mention of Margaery’s name again, but he didn’t go back on his word. “Okay,” Sandor said slowly this time.

 

“Margaery says you’ve been with—” Sansa’s breath hitched in her throat. She didn’t think saying the word out loud would be so hard, but it was. “Prostitutes,” she finished softly, “before.”

 

Sandor lowered his head, rubbing his forehead. “Do you really want to ask me this, Sansa?”

 

“Yes, I do.”

 

“I don’t feel comfortable talking about this with y—”

 

“Have you been tested before?” Sansa blurted out, cutting him off. Her heart was beating erratically inside of her chest, and she had to take a deep breath to calm it.

 

Sandor’s head shot up at that, an expression of confusion filling his features as if that was the last thing he expected to come out of her mouth. “What?” he asked, sounding completely caught off guard.

 

“Have you ever been tested before?” Sansa repeated, her voice stronger this time.

 

Sandor’s reaction was the last thing she expected, too. His chest started shaking, and it took a moment for Sansa to realize he was laughing. “Are you asking if I have an STD?” Sandor inquired in that frank tone of his, and there was no hesitation in his voice like there was in hers.

 

Sansa swallowed past a lump in her throat. “Yes,” she said softly, glancing down at the bed.

 

“No,” he said, still laughing somewhat. “No, I don’t have an STD, Sansa.”

 

She lifted her eyes to his once more. “But have you been tested to know for sure?” Sansa asked him, not finding this as amusing as he found it.

 

Sandor met her gaze across the bed without blinking, narrowing his eyes a little bit. “Yes,” he said more calmly this time.

 

“Since the last time you had sex?” she added.

 

“Yes,” Sandor answered without hesitation.

 

“When was that?” Sansa asked quietly, her curiosity getting the better of her.

 

Sandor was quiet, staring across the bed at her. He looked like he wasn’t going to answer that question, not by the look on his face but by the way he said nothing in response at first. Sansa felt the lump returning to her throat. She was suddenly terrified of his answer because what if he had seen someone while they were just friends? Did she really want to know that, if he had? Sansa found she didn’t want to know—didn’t want to hear it—and she started shaking her head, even though she hadn’t said anything at all.

 

“Almost two years ago,” Sandor finally said, and the answer was so unexpected that it floored Sansa. Her jaw fell open, her look of shock as plain as day.

 

“Two years?” she repeated in a soft voice. Sansa was almost breathless with her bewilderment. “That’s a long time . . . ”

 

Sandor slowly grinned, and then he was laughing again. “So says the virgin,” he threw back at her.

 

Sansa’s mouth gaped at him. She crossed her arms over her chest. She had never told him she was a virgin. The subject had never come up between them, and she had never revealed it to him. “I never _said_ I was a virgin,” Sansa told him peevishly, even though she was one. Still, where did he get the assumption from to say that about her?

 

“I know a virgin when I see one,” Sandor shot back. He still had that same annoying look of amusement on his face, and Sansa grabbed one of the pillows on the bed and threw it at him. Instead of it hitting him, Sandor easily caught it. He was laughing again. Good that he thought this was all so funny because it wasn’t very funny to Sansa. She crossed her arms over her chest again until Sandor stopped laughing at her, and he put the pillow aside to give her a look. “Are you going to stay mad at me?” he asked, and Sansa wondered if she should answer that.

 

“Who said I was mad?” she told him, and she saw Sandor sigh at her question. He reached out his arm, holding out his hand to her instead of crossing the space between them. He was trying to give her the chance to keep her space if she wanted it without just invading it. Sansa glanced down at his hand. She stared at it for a moment before reaching out and accepting it. Sandor pulled her towards him as she slowly crawled across the bed to meet him. Sansa settled herself in his lap like she had done on the chair in the living room, her hands touching his shoulders as his arms came around her waist.

 

Sandor just looked up at her, and Sansa thought about asking why it had been so long for him, but she decided she didn’t really care to know the answer to that. Sandor had said the old him had died a long time ago. Maybe when that person had died, he had stopped sleeping around with women, too. Sansa decided she liked that explanation in her head, and she brought her hand to the side of his face to touch him there.

 

She felt his hand on her cheek next, his thumb gliding along her cheekbone, and Sansa leaned down to give him a kiss. This time she didn’t think about where his lips had been before. She just thought about where they were now because that was all that mattered.

 

It was all that mattered to her now.

 

 


	34. Another Whole Box of Pandoras

_* * *_

 

Yesterday’s conversation with Sansa had been an uncomfortable thing, and Sandor had been trying to push it out of his mind. He had initially thought Sansa was going to ask him about his experiences with those types of women, though prostitutes wouldn’t have been the term Sandor would have used for them. It wasn’t like he had picked up streetwalkers off of the corner, had a rough and tumble, and hoped the next morning he hadn’t caught anything because of it. God, he wasn’t that stupid. He might have done some dumb shit in his life, but picking up a girl off of a street corner wasn’t one of them. Sandor had visited what were called call girls in the past, which was pretty much still the same thing as a prostitute, but he had visited them for the same reason that Sansa had asked him about afterwards—they were a lot safer and a lot cleaner, and in their line of work, they regularly got tested, too.

 

Sandor had never bothered with girlfriends and relationships. He hadn’t wanted the burden of an emotional connection or the constant endeavor to try and make them happy. He had wanted his fix, and then he wanted them to be gone. Sometimes he had messed around with a call girl, and sometimes if he wanted more of a challenge, then he picked a girl up for a one-night stand, but relationships . . . no, Sandor had never bothered with those. The last woman he was with wasn’t even a call girl, though. She was just a normal person he had met, started talking with and shared a few beers with, and then one thing led to another. They had gone back to her place, and it had been one wild night. Sandor remembered she was gorgeous—beautiful dark skin, long and silky dark hair, and a body of curves to die for. They had had such a great time together that they actually met up a few more times after that, but then Sandor had gotten arrested. Everything about his life had changed from that point forward.

 

During his short stay in the mental ward, Sandor had met Elder Brother. He had been tested for all sorts of shit while he was in the ward, which revealed despite his crazy fucking lifestyle, he was clean. When he had gotten out of the ward, Elder Brother put him through detox. It had been hell. Sandor had lived with Elder Brother during that time instead of at his own place, and everything from his past life had been off limits—no alcohol, no drugs, and no sex. Giving up the sex had actually been easy for Sandor, and giving up the drugs had been almost just as easy. The alcohol, though, that had been his biggest weakness, and it still was. The alcohol and the anger were the things that Sandor had the most trouble with out of everything, but Elder Brother had stuck by his side through all of it. Somehow Sandor had made it out to the other side still alive when, by all rights, he should have been dead at the rate he moved before Elder Brother came into his life.

 

More than anyone else, Elder Brother held the biggest sway over Sandor. It was why Sandor had agreed to join this camp for troubled teens in the first place because Elder Brother had said it would be good for him, and in a way, it was very good for him. Spending time with these kids was actually, in a weird way, kind of fun, especially Arya. She was a crazy kid, but Sandor liked her. Despite all of the shit she threw his way, she was honest and she liked to challenge him. For instance, like right now. It was the last day at camp, and the last day at camp was always proceeded by a farewell paintball gun war. At least he had finally figured out what they had these paintball guns for, Sandor thought with a satisfied nod.

 

Arya was hiding. She was really good at that, too. He had wandered over to the training equipment area with the monkey bars and the climbing wall because he had seen Arya sneaking over this way. It was away from the crowd where the fight was supposed to take place, and so Sandor had followed her this way to see just what she was up to—and to shoot her, if possible. He was making his way quietly through the bulk of training equipment, looking left and right everywhere. There was only one direction he wasn’t looking—up.

 

The impact to the back of his head sent him to the ground on his knees, and Sandor’s hand immediately grasped the area where the paintball had hit him. There was a glob of paint there, splattered in his hair, but that was the least of his worries. It had hurt like hell when it first hit, which he probably had coming to him for looking in every direction but up, but it started to ebb off into a dull throbbing ache. Sandor eventually lifted his head and turned around to see if she was still there, and she was. Arya was hanging upside down from one of the bar contraptions with her legs hooking her in place, the paintball gun in her hands, her ponytail hanging straight down, and a big grin plastered across her face.

 

“You are _so_ dead,” Arya said to him as she hung there upside down. “Headshots are lethal.”

 

Sandor could have broken the rules and gotten her back, but he was going to play fair this time. Arya deserved that shot. She got him good with it, so he was going to let it slide. Sandor pushed himself up to his feet, aiming an appraising look her way.

 

“Good shot,” Sandor told her, holding out his hand. Arya’s grin got bigger, and she lowered the paintball gun in one hand to shake on it.

 

“Hey, can you hold this?” she asked, handing him the paintball gun. Sandor took it without using it on her, and Arya swung herself down from the bars. She landed perfectly on her feet as always, and then she held out her hands to accept her paintball gun back. Sandor gave it to her. “Thank you for not shooting _me_ in the head, dead man,” Arya told him, giving him a little smirk.

 

“That wouldn’t be fair, would it?” Sandor asked, raising a single eyebrow, and Arya’s smirk turned back into a grin again.

 

“Let’s get back to the group!” Arya said, turning around and hurrying back the way they had come from originally, and Sandor followed her because he wasn’t staying out here alone, dead or not. “I’ve got more unsuspecting innocents to kill!”

 

“Oh, you kill innocents now?”

 

“Well, you’re not an innocent,” Arya told him, looking back, “but they are.”

 

“Why am I not an innocent?” Sandor asked, mildly perturbed at being singled out.

 

“ _Because_ ,” Arya argued without giving a reason, “you just _aren’t_.”

 

“Well, that’s first class logic,” Sandor deadpanned.

 

“Shut up.”

 

“Can’t. I’m a talking dead man. I’m going to haunt you all the way back.”

 

Arya stopped all of a sudden, turning around to look at him with an expression of shock written all across her face. “That’s not fair!”

 

Sandor stopped, too, giving her a look as well. “Who are you to tell a dead man what he can and can’t do?” he asked her, disbelief in his voice.

 

“You can’t haunt me all the way back!” Arya protested. “You’ll mess up my game!”

 

“Perfect,” Sandor said. “My mission in the afterlife is to ruin your life.”

 

“That’s . . . that’s bullshit!”

 

“Well, you can’t kill me again,” Sandor reasoned with her. “I’m already dead, so now you’re just going to have to listen to me rambling at you for the rest of your day, ruining every shot you try to make.”

 

“You’re such an asshole!”

 

“Ah, but I’m good at it,” Sandor said, raising his brow and nodding his head.

 

Arya growled at him, but she turned her back to him and hurried back to the crowd. Sandor had to turn in his paintball gun, but he stayed true to his word of haunting Arya for the rest of the day at camp because she had killed him on the equipment grounds. He ruined a multitude of her shots, but he let her get some on principle alone. She was in the lead, anyway, with the most kills under her belt compared to everyone else. Arya was a regular master level assassin.

 

When the day was over, Arya was declared the top champion with the most kill shots and mortal woundings. She won a Nerf gun and some gift card, which made her the happiest camper on the site. She jumped up and down in her excitement. The crowd started clapping for her, and Sandor found himself clapping, too. Afterwards, Sandor went to the male counselors’ locker room to change back into his regular clothes, and then he turned in his uniform. Camp was officially over, but to be honest, Sandor was a little sad about it. Despite himself, he kind of liked it here. It was odd and unexpected, but he had a feeling he was going to miss it. Sandor had just left the main building, and he was heading out to his car to finally go home when Arya ran up to him.

 

“Hey, Sandor!” she called out before he could get into his vehicle.

 

Sandor had his hand on the door handle with the door halfway open, but he paused in the middle of opening his door to look over at her. “Yeah?” he asked.

 

“Can you give me a ride home?” Arya asked him. “My parents aren’t answering the phone, and they aren’t here yet.”

 

Sandor didn’t think anything of it, so he shrugged his shoulders. “Sure,” he said. “Hop in.”

 

Arya grinned and hurried over to the passenger side, sitting down before he even managed to get into his seat, and then she was buckled up and waiting patiently on him. Sandor closed his door and buckled up as well, and then he pulled out of the parking lot and followed the familiar streets all the way to Winterfell Avenue. This time, given the circumstances, Sandor felt comfortable enough to actually pull up into the driveway. He parked the vehicle if only to give Arya enough time to get out with all of her things and not trip over herself, but Arya glanced over at Sandor without getting out.

 

“You wanna come in?” Arya asked him, and Sandor cut a sudden look of alarm at her.

 

“What?” he asked, like that was the craziest thing she could have ever possibly mentioned to him.

 

“Oh, c’mon, don’t be such a scaredy cat,” Arya shot back at him, narrowing her eyes. “It’s not like my parents know you’re secretly seeing Sansa. You’re my camp counselor. Come on in and meet them,” she urged.

 

“No,” Sandor said quickly. “No, I’m good.”

 

“Oh, _please_ ,” Arya begged. “I’ve told them all about you. They’d love to meet you.”

 

Sandor’s eyes went wide with alarm. “What did you tell them?”

 

Arya grinned big. “Good things!” she said happily.

 

“How do I know they’re good things?” Sandor asked, looking at her skeptically. He wasn’t about to walk into an ambush for Arya’s amusement. She would pull a stunt like that, too.

 

Arya sighed in exasperation. “It’s not a trick,” she said pointedly. “I promise. You know, one day this whole you and Sansa thing is going to hit the fan, anyway. You can’t keep it a secret forever, but they won’t find out from me. That’s beside the point, though. The point is it’s not a trick. I just want you to meet them. C’mon, it’ll be fun.” When he didn’t make a move to open his door, Arya leaned over to tug on his arm. “C’mon, Sandor,” Arya urged, “you know you want to meet them. Admit it!”

 

Sandor sighed deeply. All right, so a part of him did want to meet Sansa’s parents, if only to see what they were like without them knowing he was secretly dating their daughter. It wasn’t like Sansa was going to take him home anytime soon to introduce him to her parents. That thought struck Sandor as strange. Why was he thinking about being introduced to Sansa’s parents? He was shocked by his thoughts for a moment until he remembered Arya was trying to pull him out of the car and into her home to meet them. Oh, right, that explained it.

 

Reluctantly, Sandor got out of the vehicle, which initiated a little squeal of happiness out of Arya. She gathered up her things as he shut his door, and then she hurried out of the passenger side and nearly tripped on herself with all of the things she was carrying. Sandor took one of her bags from her as well as the Nerf gun to help her out, and together they walked up to the front door. Despite how calm he was in the car, Sandor felt completely on edge standing at the front door of Sansa’s house, knowing he was about to see her parents for the first time.

 

Arya went to open it, but it was locked, so she knocked really loudly on it. Sandor heard some running, what sounded like fighting, and then the door suddenly opened up. Two boys were standing there, one with dark hair and one with red hair, and the one with red hair grinned at the sight of them. The one with the dark hair looked confused, and he eyed Sandor curiously.

 

“Hey, Arya!” the redheaded boy said, waving hysterically as he grinned wide at her.

 

“Who’s that?” the dark-haired boy asked with a suspicious tone to his voice, his narrowed eyes still on Sandor.

 

“This is my camp counselor, Sandor Clegane,” Arya said, and she gestured back at him with one of her hands. She looked back at Sandor for a moment. “Sandor, this annoying one is my brother, Bran, and _this_ annoying one—” she added, pointing at the redhead, “—is my brother, Rickon.”

 

“Hey!” Rickon exclaimed, sounding offended at being called annoying right along with Bran.

 

“I love you, Rickon,” Arya said, and Rickon grinned again, satisfied enough with her admission of love to let go of her insult.

 

“Oh, okay,” Bran said, opening the door all the way for both of them. “You can come in, then.” Bran turned his head to the left all of a sudden. “Mum! Dad! Arya is home, and she brought a strange man with her!”

 

“You little shit—” Arya began, but Bran laughed at her and ran off.

 

Arya walked into the house, and Sandor slowly followed behind her, carrying her things. He gently closed the door using his foot first and his elbow next to shut it, and then he heard a woman’s voice coming towards them with accompanying footsteps. “What do you mean, a strange _man_ —”

 

The woman—their mother, Sandor assumed—stepped around the corner from the dining room and walked into the living room. She paused at the sight of Arya and Sandor, and Sandor didn’t know what to do, so he just stared back. She wasn’t a very tall woman, but she stood very straight, and she had a long cascade of auburn hair. Well, at least Sandor knew where Sansa got it from, then. The woman was clearly in her forties at least, and she had fine lines on her face, but she was still a good-looking lady. She appeared confused until Arya broke the silence as she was putting down her things onto the floor, and Sandor followed Arya’s example and lowered the bag and the Nerf gun.

 

“Mum,” Arya said, gesturing at Sandor now that both of her hands were free, “this is Sandor, my camp counselor. I tried calling, but you didn’t answer the phone, so I asked him if he could give me a ride home.”

 

Her mother’s face lit up with recognition, and much to Sandor’s surprise, she smiled warmly at him. She turned to her daughter, though, to give her an apologetic look. “Oh, I left my cell phone in my purse upstairs!” she exclaimed. “Your father has been on the house phone for the last two hours with Robert, and I thought camp didn’t end until six?”

 

“We got out early today,” Arya said with a grin. “I slaughtered all of the kids at paintball.”

 

“She did,” Sandor added, not so afraid to speak now. He pointed at his head. “She got me in the back of the head.”

 

Her mother turned to look back to Sandor again, smiling at him once more. She crossed the distance over to him, holding out her hand for him to shake. “It’s so good to meet you,” she said happily, and Sandor reached out to shake her hand. Despite his nervousness at the front door, he found himself relaxed now. “Arya has told us all about you. Thank you so much for bringing her home. I’ve been dying to meet you. Arya just _loves_ you—”

 

“ _Mum_ —” Arya said, a warning tone in her voice.

 

“—She talks about you _all_ the time,” her mother continued, and Sandor found himself grinning. He looked over at Arya, raising his eyebrows at her. Arya just huffed and crossed her arms, giving him a look of annoyance. Sandor looked back at her mother, though.

 

“I didn’t catch your name,” he said slowly, drawling it out.

 

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Look at me, forgetting my manners. My name is Catelyn.”

 

“It’s nice to meet you, Catelyn,” Sandor told her, but just then, another figure walked into the room from the dining area as well. He was a well-built man, not as big as Sandor, but somewhat intimidating all the same. There was a brooding look to his solemn face, and he had short-cropped dark blonde hair as well as a neatly trimmed short beard and mustache. He took one look at Sandor and froze in his steps for a moment, narrowing his gaze, before he slowly crossed the rest of the distance to stand by Catelyn’s side.

 

“Oh, darling,” Catelyn said, turning to the man with a smile on her face, “this is Sandor, Arya’s camp counselor. Sandor, this is my husband, Ned.”

 

Ned extended his hand to Sandor. “Nice to meet you,” he said, but he didn’t sound like it was nice to meet him. Still, Sandor grasped his hand in a firm handshake. Ned’s grip was like iron. Sandor returned it. There was something about men and handshakes and the strength you put behind them, so Sandor made a point not to have a softer handshake than Ned. Ned seemed satisfied with this, and finally, his look loosened up a little.

 

“Would you like to stay for supper, Sandor?” Ned suddenly asked out of the blue, and Sandor was shocked at the offer. He wondered if he should accept or say no. So far, he hadn’t seen Sansa, so maybe she wasn’t home. If she wasn’t home, though, Sandor wondered where she was right now.

 

“Sure, he’d like to stay,” Arya answered for him, and Sandor cut a dark look at her, but Arya just grinned back at him. “Mum, Dad, can Sandor help me bring my stuff to my room?” she asked next. “I have a lot of crap to carry up there.”

 

Catelyn smiled and nodded her head, and Ned seemed unperturbed, but Sandor couldn’t be sure. “Sure,” Catelyn said, “but make sure to join us in the kitchen. Supper is almost ready.”

 

Arya quickly went to pick up half of her things as Catelyn and Ned disappeared back into the kitchen through the dining room, and Sandor helped her grab the rest. Together, they toted them up the stairs. Arya carefully wrangled between her bags and the knob to her bedroom door, managing to open the door. She kicked it open the rest of the way. Sandor was shocked by what he saw on the other side.

 

It looked like a boy’s room, not a girl’s room. There were action and horror movie posters all over the walls instead of posters of boy bands, and the walls were a deep green color much like the green of his apartment that Sansa had picked out. Arya’s bed was covered with a brown and blue comforter, and her room was an absolute mess. There was stuff all over the floor, and no sense of organization to any of it. She had a computer desk completely covered in action figures. Sandor recognized some of them, but not all of them. She had an alien and a predator depicting a fight scene on the shelf above her monitor. The alien had the predator in a death grip, but the predator had a laser gun aimed right at the alien’s head.

 

“Mi casa, su casa,” Arya told him, dropping everything onto the floor at once. She turned around to face him. “Go ahead, just drop it,” she said. “It doesn’t matter where it falls.”

 

Sandor did as she said and just dropped her bag and the Nerf gun. He looked around her room with an impressed look on his face. “Nice set up you got here,” he said. When he looked back at Arya, she had her hands on her hips and she was grinning.

 

“I know, right?” she asked, nodding her head.

 

“Messy, though,” Sandor said, gently poking a bundle on the floor with his foot.

 

“Ugh, you sound like my mother,” Arya shot back, and suddenly, her eyes lit up with an idea. Arya hurried over to his side and took Sandor by the elbow. “Hey, c’mere,” she said in a whisper, “I’ve got an idea.”

 

“What’s that?” Sandor asked in his normal voice, but Arya shushed him.

 

“Be quiet,” she whispered. “Keep your voice low, and follow me.”

 

Sandor had no idea what this was about, but he followed Arya’s instructions all the same. Arya led him down the hallway to another door, and she grabbed his sides to position him in front of the door. “What are you—” Sandor began, but Arya cut him off.

 

“Shh,” Arya shushed him again. “Stand still. Be quiet.” All of a sudden, Arya knocked loudly on the door, and then she darted off to the left to hide. Sandor’s eyes followed her in confusion, wondering just what she was up to when the door in front of him opened and he looked back because of it.

 

Sansa was standing there, and at the sight of him, she suddenly screamed and fell backwards.

 

Arya burst out laughing to his left, slapping her legs hysterically.

 

“What is going _on_ up there?” Catelyn’s voice demanded from below, and Arya called out to answer her.

 

“Nothing, Mum! I just scared Sansa with a plastic snake!”

 

“Stop scaring your sister!” Ned called out next.

 

Arya started laughing again, though, slapping her legs some more. “Ah, that was so _good_!” she said. “Totally worth it! Oh my god, I wish I had recorded it!”

 

Sandor crossed his arms, turning around to face Arya. “That wasn’t funny,” he said firmly.

 

“That was _hysterical_ ,” Arya told him, grinning with a twinkle in her eyes.

 

Sandor looked back into the room. Sansa was still sitting on the floor where she had fallen, her palms behind her, looking absolutely terrified at the sight of him in her house. Sandor felt really bad for her. That was some harsh shit to pull, after all. Sandor stepped into her room a little bit, offering her his hand. Sansa stared at it for a moment, breathing heavily, before finally accepting it and letting him help her back to her feet.

 

“I drove Arya home from camp,” Sandor told her quietly. “She wanted me to come in and meet the parents,” he added, raising his eyebrows.

 

Sansa’s eyes darted between Arya, who was now peeping around the threshold of the door and grinning, and Sandor. She still looked horrified by his presence. “Um, okay,” she said slowly. Sandor gently rubbed his thumb across the top of her hand.

 

“Hey, don’t worry,” he said, trying to calm her down after the heart attack her sister nearly gave her with that prank. “They don’t know. I’m just here for a visit, and then I’m gone.”

 

“He’s staying for supper,” Arya called out from the doorway, and Sansa’s eyes went even wider with fear.

 

“No,” Sansa argued, shaking her head really fast, “no, you can’t—”

 

“Oh, but Dad already invited him,” Arya protested, “ _and_ he said yes!”

 

“Sandor, no—”

 

“It’s just supper,” Sandor said, shaking his head as well. He remembered he was still holding Sansa’s hand, and he quickly let it go in case anyone showed up behind him all of a sudden. He didn’t want Catelyn or Ned seeing him holding their daughter’s hand. That would have been hard to explain. “I won’t be here long. I don’t want to say no after your father invited me.”

 

Sansa swallowed past a lump in her throat. She looked like she wanted to argue further, but she seemed to give up. Just then, Ned’s voice called from the first floor, “Supper’s ready! Everyone, come down!”

 

Rickon and Bran busted out of one of the bedrooms together, rushing past Arya through the hallway to hurry down the stairs. Sandor and Arya followed after them with a bit more composure, and Sandor looked back to see Sansa hesitating at her doorway. At his look, though, she slowly pulled herself away, closed her door, and followed them as well.

 

If Sandor expected things to be awkward, they were surprisingly quite pleasant. Catelyn asked about everything that had happened at the camp so far, and Sandor and Arya filled her in on everything with equal enthusiasm, recalling all of the crazy and funny shit they had been through ever since he started there. Catelyn grinned and laughed through all of it, as did Bran and Rickon, but Sansa was oddly quiet and nervous in her seat a few spaces down from Sandor and Ned remained rather quiet himself. Sandor saw the man crack a smile here or there, but otherwise, Ned was fairly stoic to everything.

 

Eventually, supper was over, and Sandor said farewell to everyone. He shook Catelyn and Ned’s hands once more, and Arya insisted walking him back out to his car. When they reached his car, Arya grinned at him.

 

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” she asked.

 

Sandor lifted his brow. “I doubt your sister agrees,” he said.

 

Arya rolled her eyes. “She’ll get over it. I’m sure she was glad to see you.”

 

Sandor sighed at her. “Well, I’m going home. See you later, kid,” he told her, and he went to open his car door.

 

“Hey, Sandor,” Arya said.

 

Sandor paused and looked back at her. “Yeah?”

 

“Why don’t you come with Sansa, Gendry, and me to the beach tomorrow?” she asked him. “We always go to the beach together at the end of every summer right before school starts back. Well, last time it was me, Gendry, Sansa, and Joffrey, but Joffrey was a right royal prick. I was sword fighting him across the beach, and he fell over and got a cut and _bitched_ about it all day. It was a total nightmare,” Arya added, rolling her eyes and shaking her head at the memory. “Anyway, it’ll be fun. Sansa will love it. You should totally come with us. _Please_?” Arya pressed her hands together in front of her, giving him a doleful look with puppy dog eyes, and Sandor felt himself sighing again.

 

“Oh, all right,” he agreed, even though he wasn’t much of a beach person. He had gone enough times with Sansa to have possibly changed that about himself. Because of her, Sandor had visited the beach a lot this summer, but he had never gotten into the water yet. Sandor had a funny feeling that Arya would probably make him get into the water if he agreed to go, but somehow, this thought didn’t bother him as much as he thought it would.

 

Arya grinned brightly at Sandor and jumped up, making a fist pumping motion with both of her hands. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “Awesome! I’ll tell Sansa. We’ll swing by in Gendry’s car to meet you at your place at noon,” Arya said. “How does that sound?”

 

“Sounds good,” Sandor told her. “I’ll see you, then.”

 

“Sweet,” Arya said, still grinning. “See you tomorrow!” She turned around and ran back towards her house, and Sandor watched as she disappeared inside, shaking his head at himself. Finally, he got into his car and pulled out of the driveway into the street, turning the car around and heading the way back to his apartment.

 

Sandor never noticed Ned looking out of one of the dining room windows, holding back the sheer white curtain and gazing at him as he drove off.

 

 


	35. Rolling Dice and Staying Out ‘Til Three

_* * *_

 

Ned was sitting in bed with Catelyn, brooding. Ned didn’t try to brood on purpose. He was just a natural thinker. His brother, Brandon, had been the ‘act first and think later’ type, and Brandon had gotten himself killed at an early age because of it. Thinking before acting was the move of a smart man, and Ned was a smart man, but he was also honorable to a fault. Those two things conflicted with each other from time to time, but Ned wouldn’t have gotten this far in his life if he hadn’t been the type of person he was raised to be by his father and by his father’s friend, Jon Arryn. He had gotten far, too. Ned had a wonderful career, a loving wife, and a bundle of happy and healthy children. Half of them were all grown up and off at college, but the other half were still growing up, still in school, and still living at home.

 

It was the ones still living at home that Ned worried about the most, and one of them in particular had been on his mind all evening and well into the night so far.

 

Catelyn was sitting to his left, reading a book before bed, but Ned couldn’t turn his thoughts off for a single second. Suddenly, he got up from their bed and paced over to the window. It was open to let in the cool night air, and Ned put his palms down on the windowsill. He stared forward out into the night, narrowing his eyes at nothing in particular. He looked down at the driveway where Sandor’s car had been earlier. Ned had seen that car before. He had seen it down the street before. Ned felt his expression hardening at the thought. Sansa had come home from her friend’s house before, and Ned had seen that car down the street.

 

“Ned,” Catelyn called softly from the bed, “is something wrong?”

 

Ned stared out of the window a little longer, his expression twisting somewhat. Finally, he removed his palms from the windowsill and turned around to face Catelyn. She had lowered her book to her lap and was looking over her glasses at him with an expression of concern on her face. Ned didn’t want to alarm Catelyn, but at the same time, he didn’t want to lie to her about this either. He felt he ought to be honest to her. This was important, after all. This was their daughter, and they only had two daughters out of seven kids. Ned was more protective of his girls than his boys. Maybe it was because they were girls and he felt they needed protection, but maybe it was also because they didn’t have as many girls as they had boys. In a way that factored into his protectiveness.

 

Without saying a word, Ned stalked over to their closet. He rummaged through their things and pulled out the jacket he had confiscated from Sansa’s room. Ned held it up in his hands, looking over it, remembering the size of the man and comparing it to the size of the jacket. It all seemed to fit together. The jacket was Sandor’s size, and Ned had seen the man’s car parked at the edge of their street more than once, and Sansa had been gone a lot this summer. A _lot_.

 

While holding the jacket in his hands, Ned turned around to face Catelyn again. She looked confused now, and he didn’t want to bring it up, but he did want to bring it up at the same time. He glanced down at the jacket, remembering the case of matchsticks. They were from a place called Clegane’s Keep, a pub in the center of Kingsland. Ned had been to it a few times with Robert, though he never drank up the storm that Robert did at that place. However, it had been a long time since he had gone, but because of his previous visits to it, he knew what it was without having to look it up.

 

Ned met Catelyn’s confused gaze. “What was the last name of Arya’s camp counselor who came over tonight for supper?” he asked her, and Catelyn furrowed her brow at his question.

 

“Clegane,” Catelyn repeated without hesitation, and a little light bulb went off inside of Ned’s head. His eyes hardened at the reiteration of that news, and he held out the arm that clutched onto the brown jacket.

 

“This jacket had a case of matchsticks in it,” Ned told her with a hard voice, “from Clegane’s Keep, a pub in town.”

 

Catelyn narrowed her eyes at Ned, and she slowly sighed as she removed her glasses. She gently folded them closed and looked up at Ned with a raised brow. “Really, Ned?” Catelyn asked him. “Do you know how many people go to that pub? All his last name proves is that he is the owner of it.”

 

It was a reasonable explanation, and Ned expected nothing less of Cat, but still, something about all of it bothered him. There were too many coincidences. Once was an occurrence. Twice was a coincidence. Three times was a pattern—and there was the car, the size of the jacket, and the matchsticks. There was more than one piece of evidence tying all of it together. Ned shook the jacket this time.

 

“How many men would fit a jacket this size?” Ned asked her. “Did you see how big he was?”

 

Catelyn sighed again and rolled her eyes this time. “Do you know how big Robert is?” Catelyn asked him scornfully. “Maybe it’s _Robert’s_ jacket,” she said to him, picking up her glasses again and slipping them back onto her face. Catelyn lifted her book again, clearly not entertaining Ned’s thoughts on this matter. She obviously thought it was all very ridiculous, but Ned didn’t think it was ridiculous. Slowly, Ned took a deep breath. The only thing he could think to do now was to mention the car. That would get Cat’s attention.

 

“I saw his car at the end of the street before,” Ned revealed to her, “when Sansa was supposed to be coming back from a friend’s house. I recognize his vehicle. I was looking at it when he drove away tonight. It’s the same vehicle, Cat.”

 

“You’re being paranoid, darling,” Cat told him calmly, staring down at her book.

 

“Sansa disappearing all of the time, coming home with a huge jacket that is just his size with a case of matchsticks in its pockets that says Clegane’s Keep and a condom, getting dropped off in his vehicle at the edge of our street, and then not coming home at all one night and acting like she had a headache when she probably had a hangover is me being _paranoid_?” Ned asked his wife, and Catelyn stared at him at first with narrowed eyes at his diatribe until her eyes slowly widened from everything he just said out loud to her.

 

“Oh my _god_ ,” Catelyn said, looking absolutely horrified, and she raised her hands to her mouth. “My baby!” Then, all of a sudden, her face hardened as Ned’s had done. Cat looked deadly furious. She tossed her book aside and threw the covers off of her lap, immediately reaching for her robe and her slippers. “I am going over to his place at _once_ —”

 

“Cat—”

 

“This is unacceptable!” Catelyn hollered out, shaking her fist.

 

“Catelyn—”

 

“ _What_?” she asked with a sudden ferocity, whirling around to face Ned.

 

“You don’t know where he lives,” Ned told her.

 

Catelyn let out a ragged sigh at that, her chest deflating. Her eyes lit up after a moment, and she held up a single forefinger. “I bet I could find him in the _phonebook_ ,” she said with determination, and she walked straight over to their bedroom door as if to go downstairs in order to fetch the phonebook.

 

“ _Cat_ ,” Ned urged her, and Catelyn turned around at the door to look at him once more with a confused expression spread across her face. “It’s too late to go anywhere tonight,” he reasoned with her. “Sansa is safely asleep up in her room, and Sandor is at his place, wherever that is. Everything is fine right now, so there is no need to overreact.”

 

Despite being upset himself, Ned wasn’t about to go anywhere this late at night. Besides, he didn’t want to show up in the middle of the night and harass the man. Ned wanted to handle this like an adult. He wasn’t a child, and he wasn’t going to handle it like a child. Catelyn, however, had a Tully temper, and sometimes she jumped the gun without thinking about the consequences ahead of time. Ned was a planner and a thinker, and they were going to think this one through if he had anything to say about it—and he did, because he had discovered it in the first place.

 

“What are we going to do, then?” Catelyn asked him, looking worried instead of angry for once.

 

“For starters,” Ned told her, “let’s leave Sansa out of this. I don’t want to push her away. We need to be loving and supportive, or she isn’t going to trust us.”

 

Catelyn nodded her head in agreement. “You’re right,” she said. “We must not speak of it to Sansa.”

 

“I will speak to this man, Sandor, myself,” Ned continued. “I think it would be best to have a man-to-man with him. I’ll go to his pub and speak with him in person. If we handle this calmly, I think we can smooth it over and end this nonsense immediately. I don’t want to alarm him or put him on the defensive. I will talk to him about it and give him the chance to be honest. Let him admit what he’s done with Sansa. I think that would work better than verbally attacking him.”

 

Catelyn swallowed past a lump in her throat and crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you sure this is a good idea, Ned?”

 

“Yes,” Ned said, nodding his head in affirmation, “I think this is a good idea. Just the way we ought to handle it.”

 

“He’s a big man . . . ” Catelyn said, trailing off.

 

“Which is why I think approaching him in public is better than at his _home_ ,” Ned told her pointedly, remembering her rush to try and get out of the door in her robe and slippers. Catelyn gave him a look at that, pursing her lips. “We will handle this, Cat, I promise.”

 

Cat sighed deeply and lowered her arms to her sides. She crossed the distance, lifting one of her fingers to point it at him. She raised her eyebrows. “You better hope this works out according to your plan, Ned.”

 

“It will,” Ned said, and he put down the jacket near the foot of their bed. “You’ll see.”

 

Catelyn went back to the bed, pulling off her robe and hanging it back up on top of one of the bedposts. She stepped out of her slippers and crawled back under the covers, picked up her book once more, slipped on her glasses, and went back to reading as if their serious discussion had not just taken place. Ned shook his head at his wife, wondering just how she could turn her mind on and off like that. As he walked back to the window again, Catelyn called out from the bed.

 

“Oh, Ned,” she suddenly said to him.

 

“Yes, Cat?” Ned asked her, turning around to face her again.

 

“Go check on Sansa,” Cat added softly. “Just to be sure, you know. That she’s there. In bed. Where she should be.”

 

Ned sighed at his wife’s request, but it was a sensible request, after all. “All right,” he said. “I will go check on our daughter and make sure she is in _bed_.” Ned gave his wife a pointed look, and she smiled warmly at him for his response.

 

Ned crossed the room to their bedroom door, opening it to go down the hall and check on Sansa. When he slowly opened his daughter’s door, careful not to make a sound, Ned peeked his head into her room. Sansa was there in her bed, fast asleep and curled under the covers. She was breathing softly, the covers moving up and down with her movements. Ned smiled at the sight, and slowly backed his head out of the doorway to close her door once more.

 

Sansa was safe asleep in her bed, so Ned went back to his and wife’s room, closing the door behind himself with a soft _click_.

 

 


	36. Sunsets in Sweden and the Laws of Eden

_* * *_

 

Sansa suddenly wished she owned a bathing suit that was something other than a bikini. She never noticed until now, rummaging through all of her things in a desperate attempt to find a one-piece, that she only owned bikinis. Sansa had never felt self-conscious wearing a bikini before, not in front of Joffrey or anyone else, but this whole beach outing with Sandor coming along made her fret left and right over it. Maybe it was because Sandor had only ever seen her in a bikini once, and he immediately punched her brother, Theon, in the face after one look at her. It wasn’t a great first impression on two-piece swimsuits. Not that Sansa thought Sandor would punch Gendry in the face or anything, or at least she hoped he wouldn’t punch Gendry in the face. Arya would never forgive her if Sandor ruined Gendry’s face.

 

Sighing in annoyance at her preposterous thoughts, Sansa settled on a two-toned pink bikini with thin iridescent sequins sewn onto it. It was really pretty, and she liked it, so she chose that one. She rummaged through her closet for her white crochet cover up dress and pulled that over her head, straightening it out at the bottom hem where it reached her thighs. It was crochet, so it was see-through, but it offered some coverage and it was perfect for the beach when she got out of the water. A regular dress would just get soaked and stick everywhere to her skin. Sansa pulled her hair up into a ponytail, and despite the fact that she was going to the beach and likely getting into the water, she wanted to put on a little bit of makeup, too.

 

When Sansa was finished, she looked a lot more done up than she originally intended to be for today’s outing. Arya was going to make fun of her for it because all Arya did was throw on a swimsuit, and then she was ready to go. In fact, Arya had been banging on Sansa’s door for the past thirty minutes, demanding to know just when Sansa was going to be ready to go. Finally, Sansa snatched up her purse and hurried over to her bedroom door to open it. Arya was standing there with one hand on her hip and one on the doorframe with a look of exasperation on her face.

 

“ _Finally_ ,” Arya said in annoyance, and then she took one good look at Sansa and her jaw dropped. “What the hell?” Arya asked her, meeting Sansa’s eyes again. “Are you posing for Victoria Secret’s Swimsuit Edition?”

 

“Shut up,” Sansa said quickly, nervously twisting her hair around her finger.

 

“You’re wearing _makeup_ ,” Arya snapped, gesturing at Sansa’s face. “We’re going to the _beach_. We’re getting _wet_. It’s going to run right off your face.”

 

“No, it won’t,” Sansa snapped right back, giving Arya her own look of annoyance. It wasn’t like she had caked on mascara or anything. It was just a _little_ bit of makeup, nothing to make a fuss over, but Arya would make a fuss over it, of course. Arya didn’t understand makeup. According to Arya, makeup was like putting a bag over your face and hiding yourself. Sansa glanced over Arya’s appearance today. Arya was wearing a one-piece navy blue swimsuit with cut outs on the hips, and her hair was pulled up into a messy bun. There wasn’t a touch of makeup on her face, and she had a towel thrown over her shoulder. It was all very typical Arya.

 

“Yes, it will,” Arya disputed with her, giving Sansa one of her know-it-all looks that said she knew what she was talking about, even though she didn't. Sansa knew it was useless to argue with her sister in this case. She rolled her eyes at Arya, and then she led the way down the staircase.

 

“You know, you should dress up for Gendry time to time,” Sansa shot back at her. “Maybe he would like to see you look like a _girl_ for once.” Despite herself, Sansa was still angry about that stunt Arya had pulled on her yesterday with Sandor standing in front of her bedroom door. That had not been funny to Sansa. It had scared her half to death, nearly giving her a heart attack. Arya might have gotten a good laugh out of it, but Sansa had been so scared and upset that she could have cried over it if Sandor and Arya hadn’t been standing right there, looking down at her.

 

“I _do_ dress up for Gendry from time to time,” Arya snapped back after they had already gotten out of the front door and closed it behind themselves. Arya wasn’t about to mention Gendry’s name inside of the house, even if Sansa had been bold enough to say it on the staircase. As they were walking onto the sidewalk, Arya nonchalantly added, “You just don’t see it.”

 

“Oh, yeah?” Sansa asked as they walked down the road to Gendry’s house. “What do you wear for him? Overalls and baggy pants from the eighties?”

 

“Lace teddies and dominatrix outfits,” Arya said casually. “Depends whatever he’s in the mood f—”

 

Sansa stopped all of a sudden, causing Arya to bump right into her back and halt in the middle of whatever it was she was saying. Sansa whirled around to aim a look of absolute shock at her younger sister, and then she blurted out the very first thing that came to her mind—which she had been dying to ask Arya for the longest time, anyway. “Are you and Gendry sleeping together?” Sansa found herself asking, narrowing her eyes as she awaited the answer.

 

Arya’s eyes opened so wide to the point that they were almost bulging, and her mouth dropped down into a horrified gape. “What?” Arya demanded.

 

“Are you and Gendry _sleeping_ together?” Sansa repeated, firmer this time.

 

“God, _no_!” Arya immediately denied, practically squeaking out the answer and still making a horrified face at Sansa. “Where the hell is _this_ coming from?”

 

“You’re the one talking about lace teddies and dominatrix outfits,” Sansa shot back.

 

“It was a _joke_ ,” Arya enunciated for her, her eyes still bulging. “It’s meant to be _funny_ , not true.”

 

“Well,” Sansa said, letting go of her harsher tone, “I just thought the two of you were sleeping together. It seemed that way, what with the way _you_ talk all of the time.”

 

Arya’s eyes were still bulging in disbelief, and she slowly shook her head at Sansa. “No,” Arya said calmly this time, “we aren’t milking the cow, we aren’t doing the horizontal tango, we aren’t deep sea fishing, and we _certainly_ aren’t going through the backdoor entrance. Anything else you want to know?”

 

“Well, how is that possible?” Sansa asked all of a sudden, deeply confused. “Gendry is much older than you. Doesn’t he want to have sex?”

 

If Sansa thought Arya’s face couldn’t get anymore comical, it somehow did, twisting into even more obscene looks. “ _Of course_ , he wants to have sex,” Arya answered her, “but that doesn’t mean I _give_ it to him.”

 

Sansa crossed her arms, furrowing her brow at Arya. “And he’s okay with that?” she asked her sister, and Arya finally rolled her eyes and sighed in exasperation as she dropped the ridiculous look on her face to aim a more serious gaze in Sansa’s direction.

 

“If he wasn’t okay with that, do you really think we would still be together?” Arya asked her, tilting her head to the right and putting her hands on her hips as she gave Sansa a pointed look.

 

“No,” Sansa ventured slowly, “I guess not.”

 

“What brought this up, anyway?” Arya asked, and then she narrowed her eyes. Arya crossed her arms over her chest. “Sandor isn’t trying to pressure you, is he? ‘Cause I’ll kick him in his balls and teach him a thing or two about messing with the Stark women—”

 

“No,” Sansa quickly said, shaking her head. “No, he isn’t pressuring me. He’s the exact opposite, actually. He doesn’t want to go too far. So far, we’ve only kissed . . . ”

 

“Well, that’s a _good_ thing,” Arya said, sounding chipper again and giving Sansa a smile. “It means he doesn’t just like you, but he respects you. How does this have you all tied up in knots?”

 

Sansa gave Arya an affronted look. “I’m _not_ all tied up in knots,” she denied.

 

Arya looked Sansa up and down with pursed lips. “You’re tied up tighter than a sailor’s knot on a plank walker,” she said knowingly.

 

Sansa let out a sigh. “I don’t know,” Sansa said. “I guess . . . I guess I think sometimes it means he’s not that interested in me or that maybe some part of him still thinks I’m too young for him.”

 

“So,” Arya tried to reason with her, “you _want_ him to jump your bones?”

 

“I didn’t say that,” Sansa shot back, side-eyeing her sister.

 

“Then, what are you saying?” Arya asked, shrugging her shoulders. “Because you’re not making much sense. You _don’t_ want to be pressured, and he isn’t pressuring you. That should be a good thing, but then you’re thinking if he isn’t trying to get in your pants, then he’s not _really_ all that interested in you to begin with—and that bothers you?”

 

“Correct,” Sansa said at last, glad that Arya finally got it.

 

Arya slowly shook her head. “You’re weird, Sansa,” she told her, and Sansa lightly punched Arya in the shoulder. “Ow!” Arya said. “What was that for?”

 

“You’re supposed to give me advice, oh great _weatherwoman_ ,” Sansa threw back at her, and Arya started chuckling low in her throat. “Not make fun of me.”

 

“The weatherwoman must meditate on this,” Arya answered her solemnly, “and she will reveal her answer in due time.”

 

Sansa rolled her eyes at Arya, but she found herself smiling at Arya’s silliness. Together, they started walking again until they reached Gendry’s house on Steel Street. Sansa saw Gendry outside waiting on them, shirtless and in nothing but flip flops and red swim trunks, and leaning against his white car. He grinned at them as they came up, and Sansa noticed he had shaved off his horrible mustache and goatee. Good, the clean-shaven look was a much better look on him. Gendry put his fingers to his lips, whistling loudly at them.

 

“ _Ow_!” Gendry called out as he clapped his hands together. “Foxy ladies, coming my way! Must be my lucky day.” Sansa watched on in amusement as Arya grinned back at Gendry and danced her way over to him in a totally Arya way. Arya fell into Gendry’s arms, and Gendry wrapped them around her smaller frame, pulling her close to him. “God, I’ve missed you,” Gendry said, and he leaned in to kiss Arya. Sansa averted her eyes to give them a little privacy.

 

Arya patted Gendry’s bare side, and the sound caused Sansa to lift her head again. “C’mon, let’s get in the car,” she said. “We’ve got time enough for that stuff later.” She bit onto her bottom lip and turned to look at Sansa, wiggling her eyebrows at her sister. Sansa couldn’t help but laugh softly at that, and the three of them piled into Gendry’s car. They talked casually as they drove down the streets, and Gendry eventually pulled the car into a parking space on the side of the street in front of Sandor’s apartment complex.

 

Gendry glanced back at Sansa in the backseat. “Is he supposed to be coming down, or do you have to go up?” he asked her.

 

Sansa wasn’t sure, though. Arya was the one who arranged today’s outing. She unbuckled herself. “I’ll go up,” Sansa said, and she opened her door and stepped outside. Sansa felt practically naked walking down the sidewalk with nothing on but a see-through white crochet dress and a pink sequined bikini underneath it, and she turned a number of heads of people walking past her as she made her way to the entrance of Sandor’s apartment building. Self-consciously, she clutched her arms around her chest.

 

She took the elevator this time because it was quicker, and when she reached his floor, Sansa was just in time to see Sandor exiting his apartment and closing the door behind himself. He was wearing a loose white t-shirt and knee-length blue swim trunks today. The swim trunks looked brand new. Silently, Sansa wondered if he had to go out and buy a pair special for this occasion. Sandor had always told her he wasn’t much of a beach person, after all. Somehow, the thought was greatly amusing to Sansa, and it caused her to smile.

 

When Sandor lifted his head and spotted her, he suddenly froze in place. Sansa realized he was staring at her and her lack of clothes, and while a part of her instinctively wanted to cover herself up, she put her arms behind her back instead and curled her hands together. Slowly, she walked towards him, keeping her smile on her face. “Hi,” Sansa finally said when she reached him, and Sandor lifted his eyes to her face. His gaze was so intense that Sansa felt goose bumps prickle on her flesh and the little hairs on the back of her neck stand straight up as a tingle passed through her shoulders and down her spine. How could he do that to her with just a look? Sansa couldn’t understand it.

 

“Hey,” he said, quiet and low given their close proximity, and Sansa felt her shoulders prickle with another tingle. “I saw Gendry’s car pull up,” Sandor continued, unaware of her physical reaction to his voice so low like this. “Are we all piling in one car, or am I taking mine, too?”

 

Sansa wanted to say _let’s take yours_ , but then she was afraid she might want to come back to his apartment with him afterwards, and then she was afraid of what she might want to do to assuage the tingling she felt in her body, so she decided against it. “Let’s take Gendry’s car,” she said softly. “We can all fit inside. There’s plenty of room.” It was the smart thing to do, Sansa thought. She _was_ wound up tighter than a sailor’s knot. Arya had made a smart call with that one.

 

Sandor nodded his head in acceptance, and Sansa moved aside to let him go first, but Sandor gestured ahead with his arm. “Ladies first,” he said, and Sansa felt her breathing deepen as she slowly led the way with Sandor following behind her. He did that on purpose, Sansa thought, to look at her without her _seeing_ him look at her. Her face burned red at the possibility that Sandor was probably staring at her bottom the whole time. When they got back to Gendry’s vehicle, Sandor waited on her to get in first, and then he climbed in behind her.

 

While they were driving to the beach, Sansa found herself being mostly the quiet one while Gendry, Arya, and Sandor managed to carry on a ridiculously funny conversation with each other. Sansa wanted to hold Sandor’s hand, but she felt herself too afraid to reach forward, so she just slid her hand close to him on the seat and pressed her palm down against the cushion. Idly, she hoped Sandor would notice. It seemed for a longest time as if he didn’t, and Sansa forgot all about where her hand was resting and gazed out of the window as they drove closer to the boulevard by the beach.

 

It was then that she felt Sandor’s hand slide over hers, his larger fingers gently curling under her hand to hold it. Sansa glanced over at him, but he wasn’t even looking at her. He was leaning back in the seat, but looking forward at Gendry and talking with him and then laughing at something Gendry had said to him. Sansa felt Sandor’s thumb softly brush against her hand, though, and she gave a small smile at that, turning to look back out the window again.

 

When they got to the beach, everyone piled out of the car. Arya hurried ahead of everyone with a boogie board in her hands, running like mad across the sand and straight for the water, screaming happily all the while. Sansa, Gendry, and Sandor were a bit more relaxed, and the three of them walked out to the sand together. It was past noon, so the beach was packed with people. Sansa didn’t recognize any of them, though. Sansa spread out a towel and sat down as Gendry headed for the water to join Arya, who was already splashing in the waves and squealing.

 

Sandor sat down beside Sansa. “Not getting in the water?” he asked her, and Sansa glanced over at him, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand. There was a strong breeze blowing today, causing her hair to whip around her. Sandor turned to meet her gaze, giving her a look.

 

Sansa bit back a smile. “Not yet,” she said, and she looked forward again at the water where Gendry and Arya were playing, splashing each other and hollering and laughing like children. Arya completely forgot about her boogie board, and she grabbed Gendry by the head and dunked him under the water. He came up sputtering a moment later, wiping the water from his face and eyes. Sansa laughed as Gendry starting chasing Arya in the water, who was trying now to get away from him. “I’m going to wait until those two calm down first,” Sansa informed him with a grin, “or they’ll drag me underwater _with_ them.”

 

“They play rough, don’t they?” Sandor asked, watching Gendry and Arya in the water, too. Gendry had gotten a hold of Arya, who was screeching and laughing all at once, begging not to be dunked, but Gendry dunked her anyway. Gendry pointed at her, laughing hysterically as she came back up, sputtering as he had just moments before.

 

“Rough doesn’t _begin_ to cover it,” Sansa said playfully, turning to smile at Sandor. It might not have been the smartest move since they were out in public and there were lots of people around them, but Sandor leaned forward, his hand on the side of her face, and kissed her. Sansa returned it. It was a slow and unhurried kiss, and Sansa eventually pulled away. She found herself smiling at him again.

 

“Sorry about yesterday, by the way,” Sandor told her. “That whole door thing was Arya’s idea. I didn’t even know you were home.”

 

Sansa let out a little nervous laugh. “Yeah, I figured that was her idea. Nothing gives Arya more pleasure than making me scream in terror.”

 

“What a loving relationship,” Sandor deadpanned, and Sansa laughed again.

 

“It’s _very_ loving,” she said cheerfully. “We make each other unbelievably happy and completely miserable at the same time. It’s the very definition of love,” Sansa joked with a grin on her face.

 

“I can imagine,” Sandor said, a tone of amusement in his voice.

 

It was just then that Gendry came trudging out of the waves and walking towards them, and not long after him, Arya came trudging out of the water as well. “C’mon!” Gendry hollered at him, raising his arms and gesturing for them to come to him. “Get in the water, you two slow pokes!”

 

“Take off that pretty dress and flash your beach bod!” Arya shouted at Sansa, laughing at her afterwards. Arya slapped her thighs at Sansa, leaning over and giving her a teasing look, and Sansa wrinkled her nose at her sister.

 

To her right, Sandor said, “I agree with her.”

 

Sansa cut a look at Sandor, and then she elbowed him hard in his side.

 

“ _Ow_ ,” Sandor protested. “What was that for?”

 

Sansa, however, instead of answering him, rose to her feet and pulled her crochet dress over her head and dropped it to the towel near her feet. She looked down at Sandor, putting her hands on her hips, as he silently leaned back and appraised her body from the side. Sandor looked up to her face again, a small smile threatening to tug its way onto his face from the corner of his mouth, but he fought it off.

 

“Go on,” Sansa teased him, “take off your pretty white t-shirt and flash your beach bod.”

 

Sandor gave her challenging look, and for a moment, Sansa thought he wouldn’t do it. However, he pushed himself to his feet the same as she had done and pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it onto the towel beside her dress. Sansa felt her mouth fall open a little bit. She had never actually seen Sandor shirtless before, and while she knew he felt firm beneath his t-shirts, she never expect him to be so _muscular_ underneath it all. When he had told her about his habits of exercising a lot, he wasn’t joking.

 

Gendry whistled in the distance, and Sansa broke away from her reverie of staring at Sandor’s chest to cut a dark look at Gendry because she thought he was mock whistling at her.

 

Instead, Gendry hollered out, “I think I just went a little gay!”

 

“Fuck off,” Sandor threw back at him, and Gendry laughed at his response.

 

“I’m just playing, man,” Gendry said, coming up to Sansa’s side. Suddenly and without warning, Gendry snatched Sansa’s wrist and started running with her in tow. She screamed in shock at first, but then she was laughing as Gendry ran off to the water with her.

 

“Throw her in!” Arya shouted at Gendry. “Throw her _in_ , Gendry!”

 

“No!” Sansa squealed. “ _No_!”

 

Gendry swung Sansa around by the arm and threw her into the water. Sansa landed right into an oncoming wave, sinking under the water before reemerging a moment later, sputtering up ocean water from her mouth. She wiped her hands over her eyes to get the salty water away from them before opening them again. She didn’t want her eyes burning because of the water, and her eyes were really sensitive.

 

“Oh my god, I’m going to _kill_ you, Gendry!” Sansa shouted, but Gendry was laughing and running away from her towards Arya.

 

“You’re going to have to catch me first, Ariel!” Gendry shouted at her.

 

Arya laughed hysterically at that, slapping her hands against the water and splashing it. Sansa’s eyes went wide.

 

“You _didn’t_!” Sansa said in disbelief at Arya.

 

“Oh, I _totally_ did,” Arya replied with a massive grin on her face, erupting into another bout of laughter. Arya slapped her hands against the water again, barely able to breathe from her uproarious cackling. “Go get her, Eric!” she hollered at Sandor, pointing over at Sansa, and Gendry was practically dying from laughter right beside Arya.

 

Sandor got in the water, but he wasn’t heading towards Sansa. He appeared right behind Arya and snatched her up. Arya screeched as Sandor lifted her into the air. Gendry backed away from them, still laughing despite the fact that Sandor had his girlfriend raised in the air and looked like he was going to throw her. “Where do you want her?” Sandor called out to Sansa, and while Arya was protesting, Sansa found a grin overtaking her features.

 

Sansa pointed towards the deeper water instead of towards the beach, still grinning, and Sandor took her cue and threw Arya into the water. Arya squealed and landed with a splash, disappearing for only a second or two before emerging up again. “You son-of-a-bitch!” Arya called out, but she was still trying to catch her breath between laughs.

 

“Hey!” Sandor told Arya with a warning tone, pointing at her. “Watch what you say about my mother!”

 

Arya swam her way back over to Gendry, and Gendry hoisted Arya onto his shoulders. “I’mma get you, Sandor!” she said.

 

“I’m not getting anywhere _near_ him,” Gendry protested, and Sansa found herself laughing like crazy at their antics. All of a sudden, a huge wave smacked into her, though, and sent Sansa underwater. She felt a strong pair of arms go around her, hoisting her back up into the air out of the water. When Sansa opened her eyes again, she was lying across Sandor’s arms and looking up at him.

 

“Don’t drown yourself,” Sandor told her, and Sansa couldn’t help herself. She might as well go with it. _If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em_ , she thought, and so Sansa wiggled her feet.

 

“I have legs now,” she said, grinning up at him.

 

“Oh, god, not you too,” Sandor said.

 

“Go on and _kiss_ the girl!” Arya and Gendry sang out from about fifteen feet away, and Sansa felt a laugh bubbling up in her throat. It burst out of her, but instead of Sandor kissing her like Arya and Gendry suggested, Sandor dropped Sansa and let her fall right back into the water again.

 

Sansa shrieked out, half in shock and half in glee, as the water swallowed her whole once more.

 

 


	37. The Cold Mister Mister

_* * *_

 

Despite it only being seven o’clock in the evening, the pub was crawling with people. From wall to wall, it was packed to the brim. Patrons walked to and fro, finding seats and approaching others to talk to them. Some were talking with serious faces, and others laughed jovially in groups at jokes and conversations that were silent to Ned’s ears. He had just had supper with his family before driving over to the pub, using the excuse of picking up some necessities for the house as his reason for leaving. Catelyn, of course, knew the true reason for his departure, but Ned didn’t want the children knowing the truth. He especially did not want Sansa to know where he was going, why he was going there, and what was going to happen once he got there.

 

For some time, Ned had just remained in his car after pulling up. He had been watching the crowd within the pub move to and fro until he finally caught sight of Sandor working behind the bar. Ned narrowed his eyes as he stared at the man from a distance through the glass of his windshield and the glass of the pub’s window. To think that this man would work at a camp for teens and then mess around with Ned’s teenage daughter, it was enough to make Ned clutch his steering wheel in a fury that was so unlike him and more like his friend, Robert. However, Ned was not a rash man. He wasn’t going to just act out on behalf of his anger, no matter how reasonable the source of it.

 

He was going to handle this like an adult as he said he would to his wife.

 

Ned opened his door and exited his vehicle, shutting the door behind himself. He walked straight up to the pub, pulled open the door, and stepped inside. It was cool inside, the lights a little dim. The warm lighting mixed with the dark cherry wood walls gave the place an inviting and cozy feeling, but Ned felt anything but cozy as he strode right up to the bar and towards the place where Sandor was working. He didn’t even bother to take a seat because there was no point in it unless he had to wait on Sandor to finish something up. Ned was going to ask the man if he could talk with him privately outside. Hopefully, Sandor would agree to it.

 

At the sight of Ned in his pub, Sandor suddenly froze in place. However, he didn’t look shocked, upset, or alarmed at Ned’s presence. If anything, there was a curious expression on Sandor’s face as he narrowed his eyes in an appraising way towards Ned. Sandor lowered his eyes long enough to grab two bottles from behind the counter, making a drink for one of the patrons at the bar. Ned watched in silence as Sandor served the drink, and then Sandor finally turned his full attention onto Ned.

 

“Didn’t know you drank,” Sandor said casually, putting his palms down on the counter. Like Cat said, he was a big man. He was much taller than Ned. Sandor had broad shoulders as well, a piercing gaze, and scarring on the left side of his face. Ned wondered how he had gotten those. It wasn’t everyday that you saw someone with half of their face scarred up. Pushing that thought from his head, Ned focused on what he came here to do.

 

“I don’t,” Ned replied simply. He lifted his chin at Sandor, giving him a serious look. “I want to talk to you in private.”

 

Ned wasn’t going to beat around the bush about it. He wasn’t going to chit chat until a comfortable moment came up to mention it, and he wasn’t going to pretend to be Sandor’s friend. Ned didn’t plan on wasting any time doing things he didn’t need to be doing. He was going to find out what this man was doing with his daughter, and he was going to make sure it never happened again. He was very straightforward like that and very honest. Ned did not practice nor believe in the art of lying and pretending, and only in dire situations did he even believe lying was necessary.

 

This wasn’t one of those situations. This situation called for the truth.

 

Sandor regarded Ned in silence, his own expression slowly becoming more serious. He pulled back from the counter, and his gaze seemed to narrow as he looked at Ned. Finally, Sandor turned his head to call out to one of the other workers in the pub. “Asha,” he said, “can you watch the bar?”

 

Asha, a lady with a stern face and lots of tattoos, glanced over at Sandor and then at Ned. Her gaze narrowed as well, a curious expression overtaking her face. “Sure thing, boss,” she told Sandor, and she put down the glass she was wiping with a rag. Asha came over halfway between where she had been standing near the end of the bar and where Sandor was standing with Ned, bringing her closer to the center of it. Immediately, she began to check on the patrons in her vicinity with a smile on her sharp face.

 

Sandor came around the bar to the other side, walking through the thick crowd to the front door of the pub. Ned followed the man without another word said between them. When Sandor reached the door, he pushed it open and stepped out, but he held open the door for Ned to pass through it. After Ned walked past him, Sandor let go of the door and let it fall to a close behind them.

 

When Ned looked over at Sandor, the other man was staring at him. Ned expected an unwelcoming look on Sandor’s face or for Sandor to cross his arms in a subconscious gesture of defense, but Sandor did neither of those things. Instead, he casually stuffed his hands into his pockets and raised his eyebrows at Ned.

 

“You wanted to talk in private, so what is it?” Sandor asked him, and Ned picked up no traces of anxiety in the man’s voice. It brought a frown to Ned’s face. Sandor was far too relaxed in Ned’s presence, especially given what was going on between him and Sansa. Then again, a small part of Ned’s mind was beginning to silently question that idea. Sandor should be far more on edge than what he was, which was the perfect image of calmness.

 

“Are you seeing my daughter?” Ned inquired bluntly, his voice stern and his eyes cold enough to match it.

 

Finally, that got a reaction out of the man. Sandor’s eyes went wide, his mouth dropping open in shock. He removed his hands from his pockets, holding them up as if Ned had just pulled a gun on him. Sandor took a step back, shaking his head in disbelief. “Wait, your _daughter_?” Sandor asked, sounding incredulous.

 

“Yes, my daughter,” Ned returned at him, and his expression didn’t loosen up. “Are you seeing her behind my back?”

 

Sandor’s look became horrified at that assumption. “Hey, look, your daughter’s only sixteen years old,” he said, his hands still raised in the air, “and I’m only her camp counselor. There is _nothing_ going on there—”

 

“No,” Ned said, shaking his head and cutting Sandor off, “not that daughter. My _other_ daughter, Sansa.”

 

Sandor was silent at first, but his horror turned to confusion on his face. His hands slowly lowered a little bit as he stared at Ned. He just looked genuinely confused now, and at this point, Ned was beginning to doubt himself even more. “What other daughter?” Sandor suddenly asked, side-eyeing Ned.

 

“My,” Ned began, but he found himself stumbling over his words. This was not going as he had thought it would go in his head. “My other daughter, _Sansa_ ,” Ned repeated himself, not knowing what else to say. Sandor would know who Ned was talking about if he was secretly seeing Sansa behind Ned and Cat’s back. It shouldn’t require an explanation or a physical description of her looks for Sandor to get the picture.

 

Ned didn’t think it was possible, but Sandor only looked even more confused with the repetition. He turned his palms upward in a gesture of puzzlement at that.

 

“You have _two_ daughters?” Sandor finally asked him this time like he was trying to piece together a puzzle in his head.

 

Ned narrowed his eyes. “Yes, I have _two_ daughters,” he said, getting frustrated with how this was going. Ned was losing his conviction more and more with each passing second. He shook his head before meeting Sandor’s gaze again. “My daughter, Sansa, is the tall one with the red hair,” Ned explained to him, but it sounded absurd to have to explain it out loud. Ned shouldn’t have to explain it to Sandor. “I was sitting at the end of the table, and she was sitting at the edge to my left. You were on my right a few places down.”

 

Sandor narrowed his eyes at this information, and then he looked up as he cocked his head to the side in thoughtfulness. His face looked blank for a time, and then suddenly, recognition dawned in his eyes and he lowered his head to look straight at Ned again. Sandor snapped his fingers, and then pointed at Ned with them.

 

“The one who wasn’t talking,” Sandor suddenly said, looking proud of himself for finally getting it. “I remember her now. She didn’t say a damn word all throughout supper.” Sandor nodded his head with that. “You were pretty quiet, too, though,” Sandor added casually, but then his face turned serious and he shook his head. “I’m confused, though,” Sandor told him in a slow voice, shrugging his shoulders. “How could I be seeing her if I only just met her two days ago? Where is this coming from?”

 

Ned was seriously beginning to doubt himself now. He turned his head, glancing over at Sandor’s car in the parking lot. It wasn’t a very distinguishable car. It was a popular model, and while it wasn’t new, there were no scratches or defining marks on it to make it stand out, and it was black. There were a lot of black cars in Kingsland, Ned thought to himself. It wasn’t a rare collector’s item either. Suddenly, Ned wasn’t so convinced that it was Sandor’s car he saw at the end of the road before. After all, he never saw who was driving the vehicle, and he had only seen it from very far away.

 

Once Ned reasoned the car out of his mind, the only piece of evidence he had was the jacket and the case of matchsticks. The jacket was lying in the passenger seat of Ned’s car, so he walked away from Sandor and strode up to his vehicle to grab it.

 

“Whoa, what are you doing?” Sandor asked him, sounding on edge.

 

Ned paused and turned around long enough to tell him because Sandor seemed to be nervous at last, and Ned saw him slowly inching his way back to the door of his pub. Sandor froze in alarm, though, when Ned’s eyes returned to him. Ned was confused at first and a little suspicious until he realized he had just accused Sandor of seeing his teenage daughter in private, and now he was striding up to his vehicle in what appeared to be anger. Sandor probably thought Ned was about to pull a weapon on him, like a baseball bat or a gun.

 

“I have a jacket,” Ned said. “I want to show you. Let me get it.”

 

Sandor appeared to relax at that, and Ned turned back around to reach his passenger side door and open it up. He pulled out the jacket, closing the door, and strode back up to the Sandor. Ned held the jacket up in his clenched fist. “I found this jacket in my daughter’s room,” Ned told Sandor. “It was lying on her bed. It contained a case of matchsticks in it from _your_ pub, and this jacket is your size. You know my daughter, Arya. You go to _camp_ with her. You could have easily met Sansa through her. Those two are glued to each other’s hips. You don’t know one without knowing the other.”

 

Ned watched with some measure of satisfaction as Sandor’s face seemed to crack. He saw Sandor bite the inside of his cheeks, tightening his expression. The man looked upset now. Ned felt like he had finally gotten through to him, finally gotten the truth out of him, finally gotten—

 

“You know,” Sandor said quietly, “if you don’t want me teaching your daughter at the camp, all you have to do is say so. You don’t have to come up with this stupid bullshit story to drive me off.”

 

“What are you talking about?” Ned asked him, furrowing his brow in confusion.

 

Sandor’s expression tightened even more, becoming unwelcome. “This is about my record, isn’t it? I’m not a fucking idiot. Most parents don’t want an ex-con teaching their daughter, let alone spending time with her. The camp knows about my background. They do background checks, you know, but they don’t judge if you have good, valid recommendations. I joined the camp as a counselor because it was supposed to be good for me, and it is. I’m a different man from what I used to be. I lead a different life, and all I wanted to do was help other troubled kids see they could make something of themselves, too. They don’t have to grow up to be like me, but if this is some kind of problem for you, then all you have to do is be fucking honest about it.”

 

Sandor reached forward without warning, snatching the jacket out of Ned’s hand. Ned watched as Sandor threw it to the ground.

 

“You don’t have to buy a fucking jacket and come up to _my_ pub with a goddamn attitude and bullshit story so you can tell me to fuck off,” Sandor continued in a harsher tone. “If me being Arya’s camp counselor is such a problem for you, I’ll quit. I won’t go back to the camp next year. Will that make you happy? Is that good enough for you? Because I don’t need this bullshit in my life, and the moment you get in your car and leave, I would appreciate it if you never come back to my pub like this ever again. You ever want to stop by for a beer, you’re more than welcome to, but don’t fucking come up here like this ever again.”

 

Sandor was shaking his head now, and Ned found himself stunned into silence. Ned took a deep breath, exhaling it, and looked down at the jacket Sandor had thrown onto the ground. There were no thoughts in his head, only his shock at everything he had just heard, and he felt like a fish out of water, struggling for breath in his attempt to piece everything together again into something that made sense.

 

It seemed as if the silence stretched on between them forever until Sandor broke it once more.

 

“Do we have an understanding?” Sandor asked with a calmer tone, and despite everything, he was being respectful towards Ned. Suddenly, everything Ned had come here for felt like a bad joke that he had somehow talked himself into believing. In truth the jacket could have been anybody’s jacket, and the car could have been anybody’s car. Nothing proved either thing belonged to Sandor, and judging by Sandor’s reaction, Ned had gotten everything desperately wrong.

 

Even though Sandor said he was an ex-con, if the camp knew about his background and Arya liked him—no, Arya loved him from everything Ned had ever heard out of her mouth—then Ned couldn’t imagine telling Sandor to quit the camp because of him. He didn’t want that hanging over his head, or Arya’s distress next summer at finding out that Sandor was no longer working at the camp. The only objection Ned would have had would be if Sandor was a sex offender, but the camp had a policy banning sex offenders from applying in order to protect the teens. Clearly, whatever Sandor’s past crimes had been, that wasn’t one of them.

 

Arya had talked about him like he was an upstanding man and wonderful with the kids. Ned believed that it was possible for men to change, and so he didn’t want to hold that knowledge of a past record over Sandor’s head. It wouldn’t have been fair to Sandor. If he had joined the camp to help young teens from making the mistakes he had made in his life, then Ned had a high respect for that and a deep understanding of it.

 

After a long moment of quiet deliberation with his thoughts, Ned slowly extended his hand to Sandor. Sandor looked down at it, giving it a hard look, but then he reached forward and grasped Ned’s hand in a firm handshake. Ned made sure to look Sandor in the eyes, and he said his next words with a solid conviction.

 

“Don’t quit the camp,” Ned told him firmly. “I am deeply sorry for all of this. It was uncalled for, and I apologize.” He held his chin higher, giving Sandor his best repentant look.

 

The hardened expression on Sandor’s face seemed to ebb away, and his eyes appeared to lighten somewhat. He gave Ned a curt nod, silently accepting the apology. Ned released the other man’s hand, feeling utterly foolish for coming out here tonight in the first place, and turned around to head back to his vehicle. He climbed into the driver seat and closed the door behind him, cranking up the engine and pulling out of the parking lot at the pub. Ned looked back to see Sandor walking back inside through the pub’s front entrance, the door slowly falling shut behind him.

 

Lying forgotten and discarded in a puddle on the pavement was the brown leather jacket, wrinkled up and folded in on itself.

 

Ned stared at it for a moment, shaking his head at himself for all of the wrong thoughts that jacket had put into his head ever since he had first discovered it in Sansa’s room that night she had gone missing. Perhaps she really was at Margaery’s house that night. After all, Officer Tyrell wouldn’t lie about something as serious as that to Ned and Cat. Loras Tyrell was an upstanding young man, and Ned Stark had a lot of respect for him—as well as for Officer Tyrell’s colleagues, Officer Jaime Lannister and Officer Brienne Tarth.

 

Sighing at all of his thoughts, Ned drove out of the parking lot of Sandor Clegane’s pub to go pick up those things he said he was going to get for the house. He wanted to get back home so he could tell Cat all about everything he had just found out, and then Ned was just going to forget about this whole mess as if it never happened. It wasn’t worth the trouble it had caused everyone, and he was ready to put it out of his mind.

 

Ned turned on the radio in his car, tuning into a station that played music he liked, and slowly hummed along as a song he liked came on the airwaves.

 

For the first time in a while, a small smile crept onto Ned’s lips.

 

 


	38. If You Could Only See

_* * *_

 

It had been almost two weeks since Ned’s visit to Sandor’s pub, and with school starting back for Sansa, she had been so busy with everything that she hadn’t had a chance to come over to Sandor’s apartment or find a day for them to meet up somewhere in public. Either she was busy with school or he was busy with work, and so far they had only had a couple of chances to talk on the phone late at night and that was it. Sandor missed her presence, her face, and he found his apartment dreary and empty without Sansa inside of it. The walls seemed dimmer, the lights darker, and the silence thicker. He knew it was only an illusion, but it was a very convincing illusion.

 

Sandor missed her presence so much that once, late at night, when they were talking on the phone, neither of them had wanted to hang up despite the fact that they were both sleepy and had both already run out of things to say. Instead of hanging up, they left their phones on and fell asleep to the sound of each other’s steady breathing on the other end of the line. Sandor’s phone had been dead by the morning light, but he found that he didn’t much care.

 

He was looking forward to today because Sansa was finally coming over again, but a part of him was also dreading it. Sandor hadn’t had a chance yet to tell Sansa about the incident at the pub with Ned, but he wanted to tell her about it. The phone was not the way to talk about it, so he had been waiting for a moment to tell her in person. Sansa needed to know about it, after all. Her father had come to Sandor’s pub with his suspicions, and Sandor had tried his best on the spot to come up with a way to cover it all up. He could have been honest about it. He didn’t have to lie, but Sandor hadn’t had a chance to talk with Sansa about it before it was sprung on him and he wasn’t going to throw Sansa under the bus with anything that came out of his mouth. Sandor’s first instinct had been to deny it to protect her from whatever her father might do if he found out the truth about them. Sandor didn’t really know the guy, so there was no telling what Ned might do in response to the truth.

 

Sandor hadn’t really been worried about himself. He could take whatever Ned threw his way, but Sansa wasn’t aware of her father’s trip to Sandor’s pub. Had Sandor admitted to anything and Ned went home afterwards, what would have awaited Sansa for lying and sneaking around and seeing an older man? Ned could have been the boarding school type of parent, ready to ship her off like he shipped off Arya for whatever the hell Arya had done to deserve going to that damn camp for troubled teens. A lot of parents shipped their kids off to someone else when they didn’t want to deal with their children’s problems themselves, and Ned could have been that type of parent. The thing was Sandor didn’t know, and he wasn’t going to risk hurting Sansa by opening up his big mouth without talking to her first.

 

Besides, the only evidence Ned could even provide to Sandor for him and Sansa supposedly seeing each other was Sandor’s jacket with a case of matchsticks in it from his pub. If that was all the man had, did he really expect to get a confession with that alone—a jacket and a case of matchsticks, which amounted to absolutely nothing from a legal point of view? Sandor had been through the system enough to know how evidence worked in a case, and Ned’s evidence was circumstantial at best. The man had no proof to back up his bark. Maybe it was instinct given all of his run-ins with the law, but Sandor wasn’t going to give Ned a confession based on something as circumstantial as a jacket and a case of matchsticks that read _Clegane’s Keep_ across the top of them. He had avoided prison time on worse evidence than that, so he would have been an idiot to turn himself in on so little as what Ned was providing to him.

 

It would have been a different story if Ned had seen Sandor and Sansa together with his own two eyes. Had that been that case, Sandor wouldn’t have tried to lie his way out of it. He would have manned up immediately and admitted to everything Ned wanted to hear because there would have been no point in trying to deny it or hide it. That wasn’t the case, though, so Sandor denied it. He felt bad about it, if only because Ned seemed like a respectable man and Sandor didn’t want to lie to a respectable man, but he had his reasons this time for doing it and they were damn good reasons. The only trouble was Sandor didn’t know how Sansa was going to take all of this when he told her, and he had a feeling she would be upset for him not telling him sooner. Even though over the phone wasn’t the way to do it, Sandor knew she wouldn’t take well to him not telling her about the meeting with her father immediately.

 

Sansa was catching a ride over with Margaery today after school, but she couldn’t stay long because she had to be back home before supper. Sandor was in the kitchen when he heard the knock on his door, and he turned around at the sound. He dropped what he was doing to go answer the door, and when he opened it, Sansa was standing there on the other side with a big grin plastered on her face. Without warning, she threw her arms around his neck and pulled him down for a sudden kiss. Sandor was shocked at first, and it took him a moment to realize she was kissing him and he ought to kiss her back.

 

He pulled her into his apartment without separating himself from her lips, walking backwards with care in each step to prevent the possibility of tripping over his own two feet, and closed the door behind them with his left hand. Sansa, however, took the lead from there. She pulled him towards his couch, and then she shoved at his chest, causing Sandor to fall back and land seated on the couch. He looked up at her with confusion on his face. Sansa had never pushed him before, but his head hadn’t caught up to current events, and Sansa was moving to straddle his lap now. Realization dawned on Sandor at that moment for why she had pushed him, and his hands instinctively went to her hips to hold her there. Her hands ran through his hair, and Sansa leaned forward to kiss him deeply, moaning soft in the back of her throat.

 

All thoughts of talking fled from Sandor’s mind with her lips against his and her tongue in his mouth, and he let himself enjoy the feel of her. His hands ran up her sides and over her back. He wanted to touch in more ways than just that, but Sandor told himself he wouldn’t let his hands wander on Sansa’s body without her express permission first. Sansa had not given any permission yet, nor had she asked him to do anything more than this, so he kept his hands in check. Her kissing grew stronger, and Sansa bit down on his bottom lip, tugging at it a little bit. Sandor groaned suddenly, his hands tightening around her, and Sansa moaned in response. She was making Sandor’s blood rise with each nip and sound of pleasure, and her fingers dragged along his scalp. It sent tingles down through his spine, spreading to his shoulders. Sandor gripped her harder and delved his tongue deeper into her mouth until they were both fighting for breath and leverage.

 

Finally, Sandor managed to pull away and hold her back from him with his hands on either side of her face. Sansa looked upset at the loss of contact, and he almost wanted to take her swollen lip between his teeth again, but he had more pressing matters on his mind. “Don’t you want to talk or something?” Sandor asked her, breathing deeply now that their lips were separated for a moment. She had just shown up at his apartment and jumped on him straight away without even a hello spoken between them.

 

Sansa frowned at that. “We’ve been talking on the phone for two _weeks_ ,” she said a little miserably, and then she leaned closer to him, coming almost an inch away from his lips. It was about as close as Sandor would let her get for the moment, his hands still holding her back. “I want to _kiss_ you,” Sansa whispered near his lips, and dare he let himself hear it, with a seductive hint to her voice. Sansa’s tongue flicked out to touch his lips, and Sandor gave up trying to hold her back. He pulled her to him, crushing their mouths together, as her hands ran over his chest between them. Sansa dragged her fingernails against him—and _that_ was new. Sandor released a deep groan down in his throat at the contact, and then Sansa’s hands were snaking under the hem of his shirt.

 

He might have asked her what she was doing, but he was more interested in her doing it then asking her questions about it. Her elegant fingers were cool against his chest, running up and down, spreading out and touching him. Sandor closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the couch. Sansa was only touching his chest. It wasn’t a big deal. In fact, it felt really nice to have her hands there on his skin, cool and soothing, running along the expanse of his heated skin. Sandor was starting to wonder, though, if this wasn’t because of her seeing him shirtless on the beach. All of a sudden, she was really interested in his chest. The thought amused Sandor, but mostly, he focused on the feel of her hands and just let himself enjoy it.

 

Eventually, Sansa leaned forward again, pressing her weight against her hands upon his chest, and kissed him once more. His shirt was raked up between them, but he didn’t care. Sandor grasped the back of her head and deepened the kiss, and Sansa’s nails scraped his skin. He kissed her with more passion, more frenzy in each motion of his lips and tongue, losing himself in her mouth until Sansa suddenly pulled back from him, leaving Sandor hazy and confused with the abrupt change. Sansa removed her hands from his chest and brought them back to herself, letting his shirt fall back down.

 

“We should stop,” she whispered, looking him in the eyes. Sandor stared at Sansa for a little while, but he dropped his head back to the couch and closed his eyes again.

 

“Okay,” he agreed breathlessly, and he was okay with it. Sansa seemed to notice this, and she relaxed against him, but then she removed herself from his lap and sat down beside him on the couch. Sandor glanced over at her, his eyes following her as she settled beside him. He wondered how she could turn it on and off so easily. Sandor was still hot and bothered, and Sansa was already beginning to look like the epitome of self-containment once more. She tucked some stray hairs behind her ear, looking up from her lap to meet his gaze.

 

Sandor tried to push away his thoughts of wanting to grab her again and lay her out across the couch beneath him. Sansa smiled gently at him, completely unaware of his thoughts. “You said on the phone you wanted to talk about something,” Sansa reminded him, and Sandor’s thoughts drifted away from her lips to the confrontation with her father, Ned.

 

“Right,” he said. Sandor sat up a little straighter on the couch, and he turned his body to face her somewhat. He pulled his right leg onto the couch. “Your father came to my pub two days after I stayed over for supper,” Sandor told her, looking her in the eyes.

 

Sansa’s eyes grew wide with alarm, but then they softened into a look of confusion. She must have quickly worked out that if something bad had happened between the two of them, then she would have known about it by now through her father or through him. “What happened?” Sansa asked him. “Why was he there?”

 

Sandor felt his lips tighten into a thin line. “He accused me of seeing you in secret.”

 

Her look of confusion bloomed into a look of horror. “Oh my god, what happened?” she insisted once more, her eyes flitting back and forth as she searched his face for the answer he hadn’t said yet.

 

Sandor shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “I talked him out of the idea. I denied it. All he had was my brown jacket. He said he took it from your room and it had a case of matchsticks in it with the name of my pub written on them. At first, I thought he was talking about your sister, and that freaked me out, but then he said your name. I did the only thing I could think to do.” Sandor paused for a moment, remembering the confrontation and not feeling very proud of his performance, even though it was a good one. “I lied about it,” Sandor admitted to her, and then he shrugged his shoulders as if he didn’t know what else to say. He still had more to say, though. “All he had was the jacket. Said it was my size. I don’t know what else pushed him to that conclusion, but he must have not been very firm with it because I talked him out of it pretty easy.”

 

Sansa was quiet as she stared across the couch at him, but her expression had softened out of worry. “So, nothing happened? Everything is okay?” she asked Sandor, and he simply nodded his head. Sansa smiled a little bit at that, but it wasn’t much because her face fell not long after that. “I don’t like lying to my father,” she admitted in a low voice. “He won’t be happy if he ever finds out the truth.”

 

Sandor shook his head. “I didn’t want to tell him, not having talked to you—”

 

“I know,” Sansa said softly, looking up to meet Sandor’s gaze. “I know why you did it. You’re a better liar than me, though. If he had asked me, we’d both be goners . . . ” Sansa’s voice trailed off, and her gaze had focused blankly at a spot on the floor.

 

Sandor reached out for her chin, gently urging her to look at him again. When Sansa raised her eyes to his, Sandor gave her a look. “You should have told me he had my jacket,” he said.

 

Sansa smiled nervously at him, the corner of her mouth quirking upwards. “Yeah, I sorta forgot,” she murmured. “He’s had it for a while. I thought he threw it away.”

 

“He must have been holding onto it for a special occasion,” Sandor said dryly, and Sansa grinned with those words, the amusement reaching her blue eyes. Sansa leaned forward again, locking her lips with his, and Sandor closed his eyes and melted into the kiss. Her hands came behind his head, and before he knew it, Sansa had him laid out on the couch instead of the other way around. They kissed slowly this time, though. When Sansa pulled away, she folded her arms over his chest and rested her chin on her arms.

 

“So,” Sansa began, grinning down at him, “tell me about your week so far.”

 

Sandor told her about all of the inane things that happened at the bar over the past week. He told her about how Tyrion had come by with his new trophy wife, Dany, again, and this time the woman could speak about three to five words of English. Her favorite word, however, had been ‘no.’ It had resulted in giving everyone massive fits of laughter whenever Tyrion tried to get her to say something because Dany would raise her chin haughtily and say in her thick accent, “No.”

 

He told her about Davos coming by the bar again and helping Sandor play a prank on his two sons, Steffon and Allard, who worked for him. He told her about running into Officer Brienne one afternoon and how she had asked if he wanted to get lunch together sometime as friends. It was strange to Sandor, but Sansa had grinned at that and said that Brienne must like him now. Sansa also said Sandor had her to thank for that. Sandor asked her what she meant by that, but Sansa refused to tell him, and then Sandor had tried to tickle it out of her, but it didn’t work. Sansa refused to give up the information, even when reduced to tears of laughter, and Sandor finally let her go. Letting her go hadn’t been a good idea, though, because then Sansa attacked him, even though he overpowered her not long after her initial assault. Sansa complained how that wasn’t fair, and Sandor told her it was too fair. He couldn’t help that he had massive upper body strength and she didn’t, and Sansa stuck her tongue out at him, and Sandor acted like he was going to bite it off. Sansa pulled back quickly, squealing at that.

 

Even though he wanted her to stay, Sandor knew she had to get back home. They went back down to his car, and he drove her home. He made sure this time not to get too close to the end of the road, keeping his vehicle out of sight just in case. Sandor didn’t want her or him getting in trouble again because Ned was spying on his daughter’s movements. Sansa kissed him goodbye and walked home, and Sandor drove back to his apartment at a slow speed. He was in no rush to get back home, where it was empty and quiet again. The very thought put a frown back on his face despite the fact that he had just spent time with Sansa. Sandor had grown so used to her being there almost everyday that seeing her only occasionally was harder on him, and that thought made him frown even more.

 

When Sandor got back to his apartment complex, he walked the hallways and took the elevator. As he came around the corner on his floor, Sandor froze in place. There, standing in front of the doorway to his apartment, was the last person in the entire world that Sandor expected to see paying him a visit.

 

Catelyn Stark turned around at the sound of someone approaching her, and she smiled warmly upon seeing him. Sandor briefly noticed in her hands was a large plate wrapped in foil. She was wearing a floor length summer dress with short sleeves and white swirls patterned across the bright yellow fabric. Half of her half was pulled back from her face, but it hung down her back in waves.

 

“I thought you weren’t home,” she said kindly. “I was afraid I’d have to leave before you got back. I brought you something,” Catelyn added, looking down at plate in her hands as she lifted it up. Her eyes met his again, and her smile seemed to grow bigger. “It’s a cherry pie. I baked it myself.”

 

Sandor was stunned into silence. It took him a moment to realize he ought to say something or at least move again. Slowly, he approached her until he was standing by the front door of his apartment not far from Catelyn. He looked down at the foiled plated in her hands and raised his eyes to hers once more. “How did you find out where I lived?” he asked her, suddenly not trusting this situation. Sandor swallowed past a nervous catch in throat. He had just left his apartment with Sansa and had driven her home. Exactly how long had Catelyn been here, and how much had she seen?

 

Sandor also wasn’t dumb enough to believe that Ned hadn’t talked about his suspicions with his wife, so she had to have been aware of what happened at the pub two weeks ago.

 

“I looked you up in the phonebook,” Catelyn told him. “It’s strange, I know, but I didn’t know how else to find you. I wanted to thank you for the time you spent with Arya at camp this summer, and—” she said slowly, her eyes widening in a knowing look as she gazed at Sandor, “— _apologize_ for my husband’s behavior towards you. I know about what happened at the pub. He told me all about it. I figured men will be men and settle for handshakes and words, but I wanted to make a kinder gesture towards you, and so—” Catelyn held out the pie for Sandor to take it, “—pie.” Catelyn smiled once more with this announcement, and Sandor glanced down at the pie she held out to him.

 

It was rude not to accept it, so Sandor took the plate from her hands. “Thank you,” he said with a curt nod, and Sandor turned around long enough to unlock the door to his apartment. He held it open for her. “Do you want to come in?” Sandor asked her, and Catelyn’s smile never left her face.

 

“Sure,” she answered him. “Thank you.”

 

Catelyn stepped inside, and Sandor followed behind her. He closed the door and walked towards the kitchen counter, trying not to think about how he and Sansa had been making out on his couch not too long ago. Placing the pie down on the counter, Sandor turned around to face Catelyn again. She was still standing, surveying his apartment with interested eyes. Her hands were folded neatly in front of her. Sandor narrowed his eyes upon seeing such a gesture from Catelyn. It was a habit he had noticed in Sansa many times before. Well, Sansa must have gotten it from her mother, then.

 

Catelyn’s eyes met his gaze, and she smiled at him again. “Arya speaks the world of you,” she said, and then she shook her head as she opened her eyes a little further. “Arya speaks the world of _no one_ , so I can only imagine why she must like you so much.”

 

“She’s a great kid,” Sandor said casually, but he still felt nervous.

 

“Ned said you have a record,” Catelyn mentioned. “A criminal record.”

 

Sandor bit down on the inside of his cheek. He admitted it to Ned. There was no reason why he couldn’t repeat the same information to Catelyn. “Yes, I do,” he said honestly, though he wondered where this was going.

 

“How long ago was your last offense?” Catelyn asked him, like she was asking for the time of day or what the weather was like outside of his window.

 

Sandor thought no reason to mention the minor arrests that led to no convictions this past year thanks to Loras, so he focused on the last big thing. “Two years ago,” Sandor told Catelyn.

 

“And you’re a different man now?” she asked further.

 

Sandor was quiet for a moment. “I wouldn’t be at the camp if I wasn’t,” Sandor informed her. “My sponsor said it would be good for me, and it is. I didn’t want to quit, but—”

 

“Don’t do that,” Catelyn suddenly said in a stern voice, cutting him off. It gave Sandor a cold feeling in his chest, which crept down to his heart like a piece of ice sliding down his windpipe.

 

“What?” he asked her, suddenly on edge.

 

“Don’t lie to me,” Catelyn said, turning her steely gaze onto him. Her look made Sandor’s heart skip a beat. “I am not my husband. He believes what other people tell him a little too easily.”

 

Sandor felt his fists clench at his sides, his dulled nails digging into his hands. Dealing with Ned outside of his pub was one thing, but dealing with a woman in his apartment was something else altogether. He should have never accepted the pie. He should have never invited her inside. He should have—

 

There were a lot of things Sandor should have done in his life that he didn’t do.

 

“What do you want?” Sandor asked her bluntly. There was no point in playing around this time. Catelyn had clearly come here for a distinct reason, and Sandor wanted to know just what it was without having to wait through a tirade for her to get to her point.

 

“I want to see what kind of a man you are,” Catelyn told him calmly, raising her eyebrows afterwards. “Is something wrong with that?”

 

“And you’re just going to trust everything I say?” Sandor threw back at her.

 

Catelyn’s gaze was hard. “I wouldn’t have two daughters who both liked you as much as they do if there wasn’t _something_ good about you,” she said with a strong measure of conviction. “Where one of them lacks sense, the other one always makes up for it. If Sansa’s choice was such a terrible one, Arya would hate your guts as she has hated every other no-good boyfriend Sansa has ever had.” Catelyn held her chin up higher, her gaze piercing. “I wouldn’t be a very good mother if I didn’t know these things about my daughters.”

 

To hear it said so frankly out in the open like that left Sandor standing there against his kitchen counter undergoing a strong sense of shell-shock. After a time of silence passed them by, Sandor leaned upon the counter behind him, pressing his palms along the edge of it for support. It was one thing to have her suggest it, but hearing her say the truth in such a candid way left Sandor no room to slide out of this one. He was backed against a corner, and he had no choice but to be honest now. “So, what kind of man am I?” Sandor managed to ask, but Catelyn ignored it for a question of her own.

 

“What are you doing with my daughter?” Catelyn inquired suddenly, turning her sharp gaze onto him. Their eyes locked, and Sandor was taken aback by the question.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“What are you doing with her?” Catelyn repeated for him, slower this time. “Why are you seeing her? What brought you to choose Sansa over some voluptuous hussy your own age? Why my daughter?”

 

Sandor didn’t know what to say to that.  Well, he knew what to say, but that didn’t mean he wanted to say it out loud. It was personal for him, and it was none of Catelyn’s business. If a voluptuous hussy was what Sandor had wanted for himself, then he could have found one of those easy enough lingering in a bar somewhere in town, but that wasn’t what Sandor had wanted and he hadn’t wanted that in a very long time. He had spent two months getting to know Sansa as a friend, and he liked her for who she was because of that. Everything else had fallen into place as a result of spending time with her, whether it had been the fault of fate or chance. Sansa had chosen him as well. She had accepted Sandor despite his past, and sure, she was so damn beautiful on top of it all.

 

“If you want me to give some sort of approval for this relationship,” Catelyn said slowly yet again, “then, please, answer my questions.”

 

Despite the inclusion of the word ‘please,’ there was a severe tone to her voice, and it caused Sandor to look up at her face. The woman wasn’t playing around with him. She wanted to know this, for whatever reason. Maybe it would help her sleep better at night. Sandor didn’t know the answer to that, but he found himself taking a deep breath and exhaling it, and then he searched for some way for him to be able to say it out loud to her.

 

“Your daughter and I were only friends in the beginning,” Sandor said just as slowly, still looking Catelyn in the eyes. “We were friends for two months. I didn’t want to be more than that at first. She kissed me, and I pushed her away.” Sandor grew quiet for a moment, remembering all of what he had gone through with Sansa. His eyes were no longer on Catelyn, but staring at some spot on the wall behind her. “I tried, but . . . ” His voice trailed off, and his gaze met with Catelyn’s once more. “You know her. You know everything about her. She’s innocent, sweet, forgiving, and kind. I tried, but by then I could only say no so many times. I like your daughter for who she is because I’ve never met anyone like her before. It’s not about her body, and it’s not about me trying to get into her pants. It’s not like that.”

 

Catelyn’s facial expression had seemed to grow tighter with each morsel of information, but then it loosened up all of a sudden. A look of calmness bloomed over her face. Catelyn steered her eyes away from him, then, unable to meet his gaze for her next question. “Are you sleeping with my daughter?”

 

“No,” Sandor said immediately, “and if you don’t believe me, you can ask her.”

 

A lot of the tension went out of Catelyn’s shoulders, and she seemed to sigh deeply in relief at that. She walked a few feet towards his couch, but she didn’t sit down. Her hand reached out and touched it, though, and her eyes were staring down at it. “What do you do with my daughter when the two of you are together?” she asked, and her voice wasn’t as on edge as it was earlier. She appeared to be more relaxed both body and mind.

 

“We talk,” Sandor answered with a shrug of his shoulders. “We joke around.” A huff of amusement broke through his nose. “We play fight sometimes.” Sandor was quiet again, not wanting to say the last part but not wanting to lie about it either. “We kiss,” he added, a little hesitantly.

 

“That is all,” Catelyn ventured carefully, but it didn’t sound quite like a question. Sandor couldn’t be sure, though.

 

“That is all,” he repeated in a low voice.

 

Catelyn was quiet herself for some time now, surveying his couch as if it was the most interesting thing in the world to her, and Sandor wonder if she was going to say anything else. Finally, she spoke once more to break through the uncomfortable silence between them.

 

“She seemed happy when she left here earlier,” Catelyn said in a hesitant manner, and her fingers tapped against his couch. Her eyes lifted up to his again.

 

Sandor wanted to be surprised, but he wasn’t. “How long have you been here?”

 

“I followed her here,” Catelyn admitted. “I thought the only way to get to the bottom of things was to follow her and see where she goes when she leaves the house. She’s been so busy with starting school back that she hadn’t gone anywhere lately until today.” When Sandor said nothing in response, just tersely nodded his head, Catelyn spoke further. “Something about you makes her happy,” she said slowly, looking straight at him. “You seem nice enough, but I don’t know you. I would like to get to know you if you plan on to continue seeing my daughter.”

 

Sandor pulled his hands off the counter finally and crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re not going to tell me to back off and leave her alone?” he asked her, and Catelyn furrowed her brow as if the thought had crossed her mind before, but then she shook her head.

 

“Sansa is four months away from being eighteen,” Catelyn said simply. “She will be an adult, free to do as she pleases and date who she pleases, and I won’t be able to stop her. Ned thinks he can stop her, but he’s a man and he’s a father, and he thinks he can control everything,” she added, raising her eyebrows, “but I know we can’t control our daughter’s life. She’s going to make her own decisions, regardless of our choices. She already _is_. I could yell and scream at you until I’m blue in the face, and it’s not going to stop either one of you from seeing each other. Even if we forbid it, four months from now, what’s to stop her from contacting you again? What’s to stop her from moving out, so she doesn’t have to listen to us dictate her life to her from a sheet of paper with rules and regulations on it?” Catelyn almost looked sad for a moment, and then she shook her head again. “I can’t stop her, and I can’t stop you, but I _can_ make an active effort to be a part of her life—and yours.”

 

Sandor didn’t know what to say to that. It was the last thing he expected to come out of Catelyn’s mouth, but he supposed every word rang of sensibility and reason—things often lacking in situations like this. If she wanted to get to know him, it couldn’t be that bad. Obviously, he had avoided a lot worse with this admission out of Catelyn. Sandor pushed himself off of the counter, crossing the distance until he was standing in front of Catelyn. She raised her chin to him, a look of expectance on her face like she was waiting for an answer from him. Sandor just had to give it.

 

“What about your husband?” he asked, remembering how Ned seemed far less okay with this than Catelyn.

 

“I’ll deal with my husband,” Catelyn said with assurance. “You just worry about me.”

 

Her final words were a little scary, but Sandor thought about it briefly. He didn’t really need much time to think about it, though, in order to make a decision. It was pretty obvious it was worth it. Catelyn would give her blessing as long as he made an effort to get to know her and be her friend. Sandor thought he could live with that, especially considering how much it would mean to Sansa in the long run. Holding up his chin as well, Sandor nodded his head. “All right,” he agreed. “It sounds reasonable enough.”

 

At that, Catelyn finally seemed to smile again, though it was a soft smile that was barely visible. Still, it was something. “I do have a few rules, of course,” she said, and Sandor narrowed his eyes, wondering what she meant by that. “I want to be informed when Sansa is coming to visit you. No sneaking around or hiding, and no late night visits are permitted. I don’t want my daughter spending the night here—or anywhere else with you, for that matter. She is a smart young girl, and she has her life ahead of her, and I don’t want you ruining things for her by getting her pregnant.” Catelyn’s gaze became iron, and her voice started to shake. “I cannot tell the two of you to never take things that far, but if one day you do, be a _responsible_ man.”

 

Sandor felt like he was fifteen years old, being schooled by his first girlfriend’s mother on the importance of safe sex. It was awkward as hell, and Catelyn seemed to realize this from his silence and the curt nod he gave in response without words. She also noticed the tight look on his face, and so she added, “I will speak to Sansa about all of this as well, of course, as soon as I see her again. It would be foolish to talk to you and not talk to her.”

 

“Right,” Sandor agreed quickly, hoping that this would all be over soon. Just then, Catelyn held out her hand. Sandor looked down at it, and despite the agreement that had just been made between them, he stared at her hand in confusion for some time before finally taking it. They shook hands, and Catelyn tried to smile at him again, though it came out a little broken. She patted the top of his hand with her free one.

 

“I would like for you to come over for supper sometime under more _honest_ circumstances,” Catelyn added, lifting her brow in a small look of amusement. It seemed to help wash away some of the discomfort that had arisen between the two of them.

 

“Sure,” Sandor told her, feeling a little more at ease. He couldn’t find anything else to say, though, and so Catelyn seemed to take her cue from that.

 

“It was nice talking with you, Sandor,” she said at last, “and I’m glad we have an understanding.” She took a deep breath, looked up at him, and smiled again. “Have a good day.” Catelyn turned around on her heels after that, making her way to the door of his apartment. She opened it up and disappeared beyond it, shutting the door in her wake.

 

Sandor stared at the door for some time before he hung his head and ran his hand over his hair, letting out a breath he hadn’t even known he had been holding inside of his chest.

 

 


	39. I Have Come to Burn Your Kingdom Down

_* * *_

 

The air was dusky and thick with smoke. Everything was painted with a wash of blue fluorescence in the glow of the black lights upon the walls, and the smoke seemed to create a dance in the air as it swirled up towards the ceiling. The burning scent of tobacco reached his nose from across the distance, wafting off the end of a Cuban cigar hanging in the other man’s half curled mouth. There was just a hint of a smile upon the sharp, gaunt features of Oberyn Martell’s face. He was a not a large man, and so he was not physically imposing through size or height alone, but Oberyn Martell carried himself with the sleekness of a cat—or even, some might say, a snake. His dark eyes were sharp and glinting, and they seemed to laugh silently at everything around him. He had lustrous black hair that reached well past his shoulders, and currently, he wore it parted down the middle and tucked behind his ears. Oberyn passed his hand over his mustache and then down to his closely cropped beard in a gesture of contemplation. He was wearing a black suit on this particular night—and a blue tie.

 

After a moment of consideration, Oberyn Martell used that same hand to slowly pull his cigar out of his mouth, and then he blew out a thick ring of smoke from between his lips. It floated outward, spreading gradually until it dissipated into a fine ringlet upon the air. Oberyn’s black eyes shone like diamonds in the darkness despite their coloring, and his half smile looked more like a smirk on his thin lips. “If it is a mess you need cleaned up,” Oberyn said in his distinctly Dornish accent, “then you have come to the right person.” Oberyn held out his hand, which held the cigar, waving it outward as if in a presentation. “My daughters and I, we are very good with this.”

 

Renly knew Oberyn Martell and his daughters were very good with this sort of thing, or he wouldn’t have bothered to call upon them for this affair. It was a job that required more than just a handful of people, and while Renly was waiting on Sandor to give him his yes, he was focusing his attention elsewhere to make sure the rest of his chess pieces were in place on the board. There was too much at stake here to be flippant about details, and Renly needed every possible outcome checked and marked with backups to take care of any nasty messes that might sprout up from an anomaly in his plans. He was aware of what would come to pass when Jaime Lannister’s dirty work came to light, and while Martell played a key part in the plan itself, he and his daughters also would play a key role in what came afterwards as well.

 

They had all worked together in the past, and Renly had a mutually beneficial business relationship with Martell and his daughters. Oberyn Martell had a reputation as the Red Viper due to his penchant for poisons with his line of work, and his daughters were commonly referred to as the Sand Snakes. Each of them had a different skill set from the other when it came to the Sand Snakes, and each of them would be playing a different role for the game itself. Oberyn Martell was the head of the snake and the chief orchestrator of the group. He saw to the key details, the plots and ploys, and he directed the maneuvers of the dance. His eldest daughter, Obara, was the brawn of the group and brute force was her specialty. The second eldest, Nymeria, had a more subtle skill set with violence than her older sister. The third eldest, Tyene, was a master infiltrator and had a penchant for poisons like her father as well as the charming ability to befriend all of the right people for all of the wrong reasons. The youngest daughter, Sarella, was also skilled with infiltration. Sarella possessed a special expertise in acting and the pilfering of important objects and documents. Mostly, Sarella played the role of the diversion, and she was a master of it.

 

“I will be very happy to work with you once more,” Renly told him, giving the other man a pleasant smile, which Oberyn returned with that dark glint in his eyes.

 

Oberyn had tried on a few occasions to get Renly into bed with him, but Renly had sidestepped the other man’s advances each time they had cropped up between them. Renly was wholly devoted to Loras, and he was not going to cheat on the man he had been in love with for almost a decade. Oberyn, while being popular with the ladies, was also quite popular with the boys as well. He loved them all equally and often, which probably explained why he had so many damn children running around his feet. While his four eldest daughters were grown and working for him, he had four younger daughters as well who were still children. Oberyn must have never heard of birth control, Renly thought with a wry smile, but he wouldn’t dare say something like that out loud to the other man.

 

“When do we begin?” Oberyn asked Renly, bringing his cigar back to his mouth. Oberyn leaned back in his seat, sprawling himself out in a comfortable position. He looked as relaxed as a stretching cat as he toted on his cigar with hazy eyes.

 

“As soon as I hear back from my other colleague,” Renly said. “He’s been very busy lately, but he should be available soon. Once he sorts his personal business out, we will begin.”

 

Oberyn gave a grin at this. “Wonderful,” he purred. “I am looking forward to making Lannisters fall. My daughters and I, we are all very much looking forward to this, and I thank you for the opportunity to allow us to participate.”

 

Renly grinned back at Oberyn. “You are very welcome,” he replied in his most charming voice possible, and Oberyn pulled his cigar away from his mouth. His elbow was propped upon the armrest of the chair, and his hand held the cigar aloft in the air as smoke rose off the tip of it. Renly watched as Oberyn slowly dragged his tongue along his upper lip, and then he found himself growing a little uncomfortable with the gesture, but Renly kept the pleasant look upon his face despite his inward discomfort.

 

“Is this the man I will be working with, your colleague?” Sarella asked Renly, breaking Renly’s attention away from Oberyn. Renly was thankful for the question, which allowed him to look away from Oberyn and focus on something else this time. Sarella was the youngest of Oberyn’s daughters, and she had very androgynous features. Her short cropped hair was curly and black with a widow’s peak in the center just like her father, and her skin was almost as dark as midnight. She was a good-looking young lady, slender and short. She did not dress up like Nymeria and Tyene, favoring more the simplicity of her eldest sister, Obara.

 

“Yes,” Renly informed her, “you will be working with him as well Tyene.”

 

Tyene spoke up at this information.

 

“This colleague of yours,” Tyene inquired in her soft-spoken and curious voice, deceiving to her true nature, “is he a good actor?” Tyene’s beautiful face was the very essence of purity and childlike innocence while still looking very much like a grown woman, and her golden blonde hair and big blue eyes played up to that appearance with every ounce perfection. Tyene was one of the elegant daughters, though she favored modest clothing to cover her breasts and curves instead of gaudy and revealing dresses and short skirts. Her act was false piety. Despite her act and look that spoke of innocence, Tyene was a seductress and just as deadly as her other sisters.

 

“One of the best,” Renly said with a soft smile, “though he doesn’t like to admit it.”

 

Nymeria, the second eldest daughter, smirked at this news. She was tall and graceful, elegant just like Tyene, but her hair was long and black instead of blonde, and her eyes were dark like her father’s eyes. Unlike the rest of Oberyn’s daughters, Nymeria held the closest resemblance to their father. Nymeria, unlike Tyene, enjoyed playing up to her appearance by showing off her curves with more revealing outfits that displayed her cleavage and long legs. The sight hardly meant anything to Renly, but it was hard not to see what was being practically shoved right into his face. Despite her feminine appearance, though, Nymeria had a penchant for violence like Obara. Her fiery temper did not allow her the fine acting ability of her younger sisters, and so she played more into the roles that required physicality over infiltration. Nymeria and Obara often worked side by side on a job, while Sarella and Tyene partnered elsewhere.

 

“The best of them should know better than to admit to it,” Nymeria chimed in with her smirk. “It gives away the advantage.”

 

Obara scowled at her sister’s remark. “Who needs acting,” she scoffed, her mannish face twisting unpleasantly. “Two strong arms and two strong legs are all a person needs,” Obara added in her sour tone. Obara, unlike her other sisters, had not been blessed with beauty, and she seemed to be aware of this fact. Obara was tall and big-boned with broad shoulders, built more like a man than a woman, with a strong jaw set in a square face. Her hair was short and rat-brown, her skin dark, and her eyes black but dull with none of the gleam of her father’s eyes.

 

“Daughters, daughters,” Oberyn cut in with a firm but calm tone, holding up his free hand to indicate silence from them. “I am sure Mr. Baratheon does not wish to hear your squabbling.” Oberyn turned his severe but appreciative gaze onto Renly. “Apologies,” he said kindly, his voice low once more. “Sometimes they get a little carried away with each other.”

 

“No apologies are needed, Mr. Martell,” Renly informed him, smiling warmly yet again in the other man’s direction. Oberyn smiled back with Renly’s admission, and he leaned forward in his chair.

 

“I believe we have struck a deal,” Oberyn said, and he placed his cigar back into his mouth as he stood up from his seat, and then he extended his hand over Renly’s desk for them to shake on it. Renly rose from his seat as well, grasping Oberyn’s hand for a firm handshake. The corner of Oberyn’s mouth twitched upward into a little smirk. As he still held onto Renly’s hand, he removed the cigar from his mouth and leaned forward to place a kiss on top of Renly’s hand without ever breaking eye contact.

 

If Renly had been merely uncomfortable earlier, he was downright unsettled by this, but he made sure not to let it show. He wasn’t going to offend Oberyn, and if that meant he had to endure some unpleasantness, so be it. Oberyn grinned when he pulled away from Renly’s hand, letting it go at last.

 

“We will be in touch,” Oberyn said slyly, and with that, he and his daughters exited Renly’s office with Sarella at the rear. She looked back at Renly before leaving, and Renly gave her a smile, but Sarella did not smile back. She closed the door behind herself, leaving Renly in the silence of his office with nothing more than the _boom boom-boom-boom_ of the music bass from downstairs as it resounded through the walls. Renly sighed deeply now that they were gone from his presence, and he lowered himself into his seat yet again and stared forward at his desk. He had not heard back from Sandor yet, and it was beginning to eat away at the edges of his nerves, pervading into the corners of his mind.

 

After everything Renly had done for Sandor, he couldn’t understand why the man seemed to hold no recognition towards any of those deeds. Renly had not done them in hopes of favors one day, nor had he done them to hold them over Sandor’s head. He had done them because Sandor had been a friend to Loras for a long time, and in a way, a friend to Renly. Sandor was a loyal and trustworthy employee, and he followed what he was told to do without mucking things up. Of course, his personal life had been a mess, but that wasn’t important if he knew how to do his job, and Sandor had always known how to do his damn job.

 

It was why Renly needed him now. The business wasn’t like how it used to be. There were snakes and moles in everything these days, and finding people to trust had grown harder and harder over the years. Renly had to be careful who he confided in, who he turned to, who he worked with, and everything else in between. It like walking across a bed of razor sharp needles everyday and hoping none of them pricked you until you bled out across the floor. Renly had only ever trusted a select few. Loras, of course, was the closest to Renly’s heart, being both his lover and best friend, but Renly had others he could rely on as well in times of great importance, but the one highest on the ranking had always been Sandor Clegane. It was a dirty business, and not many people within it had honor, but Sandor had honor in his own twisted way.

 

Perhaps, as Renly had feared in the past, he had doted too much on Sandor that Sandor just grew used to accepting free passes for everything that he did wrong. He had gotten completely out of control near the end. Sandor, Loras, and some of the other men had been out drinking one night without Renly, shooting the shit as usual, when one of the men who worked for Renly had started bragging about how he had set fire to his cheating ex-girlfriend’s house a year ago, killing her and her two bastard children that probably weren’t even his, and never got caught for it. As fucked up as the story was, it hadn’t been any of Sandor’s business. Even though it had nothing to fucking do with Sandor, Sandor had decided to follow the man home afterwards and attack him. When the other man had gotten a hold of a knife, Sandor had wrested it away from him and stabbed him in the neck with it. Then, because he had been drunk, Sandor had left a trail of evidence in his wake. On top of that, he didn’t even tell Renly about it after it had happened, and Renly didn’t find out until the man’s body was discovered and Sandor was arrested for it. The whole thing had been a fucking disaster, and Renly had to clean it up.

 

And clean it up, he had—because Renly had doted on Sandor way too fucking much. When Renly had asked Sandor about why he had done it afterwards, Sandor had simply said he wasn’t going to fucking work with a child murdering psychopath who liked to burn innocent people alive. While Renly could understand his discomfort, he couldn’t understand the murdering part. Sandor could have been rational about it and come to Renly with the story, but no, he had decided to assault the man and kill him and leave a trail of evidence behind like somehow that was the smarter decision.

 

It had taken a lot of strings to get Sandor out of that mess to the best of Renly’s ability. Renly couldn’t have made the evidence disappear, though he had tried, but he did manage to twist the outcome of the trial and land Sandor the lightest sentence humanly possible. Afterwards, though, everything had changed between them. When Sandor had gotten out of the ward, he stopped working for Renly because he found God thanks to some prick named Elder Brother, who helped him sober up and clean up his act. Loras had asked Renly to leave Sandor be and give him some space, and so Renly had done as Loras had asked of him.

 

Renly had never been as close with Sandor as Loras had been with the man. Ever since Sandor had saved Loras’s life from that psychotic brother of his, Gregor Clegane, the two of them had been as thick as thieves for years. Of course, all of that changed with Sandor’s reformation. Sandor had decided he was a different man now, and by being a different man, he apparently couldn’t be associated with them anymore. His look of disdain when Renly had called him in for their second meeting did nothing but boil up Renly’s blood and incite his hot-headed temper into full gear. How _dare_ Sandor look at him like that after everything he had done for him? Renly had come to Sandor because he thought Sandor would want a part in bringing down Jaime Lannister, a man who had been riding up Sandor’s ass for years and trying to ruin his life, but instead Sandor looked at _Renly_ with his contempt—not Jaime Lannister.

 

After everything Renly had done for Sandor, he hadn’t known how else to react to that. His reaction had been instinctual, borne out of insult and injury. Jaime had done nothing for Sandor, nothing to earn his respect or protection, and so Renly couldn’t understand it—and it ate away at his mind, night and day.

 

Tired of his thoughts, Renly got up from his desk and made his way out of his office to the throng of bodies below. He wanted some fresh air, and it was cool outside tonight. Once he made it past the doors, Renly tilted his head up to the sky and breathed in deep, closing his eyes. It was refreshing and peaceful, and it helped to ease his tired mind. After some time of standing there alone and listening the passing cars on the boulevard, Renly heard one of them pull up to the curb and park. He lifted his head up and looked at it.

 

It was Loras’s police car.

 

Slowly, a smile made its way onto Renly’s face. He waited for Loras to get out of the car before crossing the distance halfway and meeting Loras on the sidewalk. Renly embraced him, holding Loras tightly despite the fact that they were in public and Renly wasn’t fond of public displays of affection, but tonight he was going to make an exception to that rule. Loras seemed a little taken aback by it as well because it took him a moment to return Renly’s hug, but his arms went around Renly and held him back.

 

“Is everything all right?” Loras asked him softly, and of course, Loras would know when something was wrong. Loras always knew when something was wrong with Renly, even if Renly tried to hide it from him.

 

“I’m tired,” Renly said into Loras’s ear, and he pulled back to capture Loras’s lips in a kiss, running a hand along his jaw.

 

When Loras pulled away a moment later, he was smiling as he asked, “Tired enough to kiss me?”

 

“Tired enough to fuck you,” Renly responded in a low voice, clacking his teeth together in a pretend bite, and Loras laughed at him.

 

“You’re thinking too much again,” Loras told him softly a moment later, running his hand along Renly’s hair. He gently ruffled it, wrinkling his nose at Renly and making a funny face.

 

“Help me shut my brain off, then,” Renly told him in a murmur, leaning in for another kiss, which Loras gladly gave to him. Loras parted his lips, and Renly took what was offered as he deepened the kiss with his tongue. Nothing calmed Renly like Loras could calm him, and sometimes a single kiss was all it took to make everything disappear. Renly loved that about Loras, how he was the switch to all of the bad stuff, and a way for Renly to climb his way back up to some sort of peace and security.

 

Renly would have never gotten this far without Loras by his side, and he knew it. He didn’t need it explained to him or for Loras to say it out loud. If it hadn’t been for Loras, Renly would have lost himself a long time ago. Loras managed to steady him every time he lost his balance, and Loras managed to catch him every time he fell and pull him back onto his feet. He couldn’t live without the other man in his life, and he hoped one day that if one of them was meant to die that he went first because he couldn’t imagine a life without Loras in it. Sometimes he tried to find ways out loud to tell Loras these things, but the words always fell short of the reality, and so Renly never said them. He still felt them, though. It didn’t make them any less real because he didn’t say them out loud. One day, Renly thought, he would find the words to tell Loras how much he meant to him, and maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t fall short of the reality of what Renly felt for Loras.

 

Eventually, Loras pulled back from their kiss. His eyes were sad, and he shook his head at Renly. “You know I don’t get off work for another four hours,” Loras said, and Renly frowned at that. Renly lowered his hands to Loras’s hips, gripping hard and pulling Loras towards him.

 

“What about a quickie in my office, then?” Renly asked him softly, not afraid to plead for it if he had to. When it came to Loras, Renly was not too proud to beg for sex. He was too proud to beg for other things, but not for that.

 

“Babe—” Loras began as if to protest, and Renly knew he was about to say _I can’t_ , so Renly silenced him with another kiss to make him rethink the proposition. It seemed to work because Loras melted into it, loosening up his tense posture, and Renly slid a hand behind his neck as he drew him closer. Loras returned the motions of his lips with more fervor this time, and Renly smiled against them—knowing he had won despite Loras’s initial protest.

 

When they separated from their heated kiss, Loras breathed deeply to regain his composure. His lips were red and swollen. “Okay,” he agreed in a whisper, and Loras suddenly grabbed Renly this time for a kiss that only lasted for about two seconds. “But we better get up to your office now before I fuck you in the street,” Loras added quickly afterwards.

 

Renly chuckled at that, but he wasted no time taking Loras by the hand and ushering him into the club. Renly led the way to his office, shutting and locking the door behind them before shoving Loras against it and locking their lips and mouths together once more. They kissed for a short while against the door before Loras pushed away from it and guided the way over to Renly’s desk, practically dragging Renly along with him. Loras swiped a hand over the top of his desk, knocking over a lot of things Renly might be pissed about later, but right now Loras’s hands were working on undoing Renly’s pants in a hurried effort to get him undressed and the last thing Renly cared about were the fallen items on the floor.

 

Grasping the back of Loras’s neck, Renly dragged him down for another kiss and let himself forget about everything else but the feel of the warm mouth and soft tongue of his lover against his own. Any thoughts he might have had to ruin his suddenly good mood fled from his mind, leaving room for nothing but his desire.

 

Renly was going to be mad about the desk in the morning—after all, this thing had cost a fortune and they were about to have _sex_ on it—but right now, he couldn’t have cared less.

 

 


	40. The Pounding of My Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** I wanted to thank all of you who responded to my posted questions/concerns! I’m going to take what a lot of you said to heart. After all, as many of you said, you can’t please everybody. I do want to enjoy writing this story and not feel pressured to turn it this way or that. I do want to assure everyone that Renly is the last POV person being brought into the story unless I one day do a Catelyn POV. The Martells are minor characters just playing into the main plot that is between the Baratheon/Lannister clans, so they won’t be taking away any screen time from the main characters. They will play alongside the main characters, and that is all. :)
> 
> Anyway, I really just wanted to respond to everyone all at once with a huge, “Thank you!” for your input and thoughts. Sandor and Sansa are the main aspect of this story, and they will continue to be. At the same time, I do want to flesh out all of the people they interact with so the whole story feels alive—and not just Sandor and Sansa. So, thank you all for reading! I hope you all continue to enjoy this story! <3

_* * *_

 

A few days ago when Catelyn had come to Sansa after supper to talk with her, Sansa had almost had a heart attack because of it. Before her mother could explain the entire situation to her, Sansa had heard how her mother had gone to Sandor’s apartment and had a talk with him, and her initial reaction was to have a panic attack. Sansa couldn’t breathe, and then she was crying, and then she tried to find a way to explain everything to Catelyn in words that wouldn’t come out of her mouth, just more tears and wheezing breaths. Catelyn had pulled Sansa to her chest and cradled her there like she was a little girl again until she calmed down, and somehow before any words were spoken, Sansa had realized something utterly significant in that moment.

 

What she felt for Sandor was more than just a crush, more than just liking him, and more than just thinking he was handsome, because coming into contact with the possibility of never seeing him again nearly caused her to have a nervous breakdown. Sansa had clung to her mother in silence, not knowing what to say, and hearing the next words out of Catelyn’s mouth spoken so calmly right above her head caused Sansa’s eyes to widen and her hands to clutch onto her mother tighter. She had lifted her head from Catelyn’s chest to look her in the eyes, and still, couldn’t find the words to say.

 

Her mother was okay with it. The relief that had flooded her veins with that knowledge had been the calmest peace, not an ecstatic happiness or sudden excitability, and Sansa found herself slowly smiling at her mother. Even though she had felt on the verge of tears again for a completely different reason, Sansa carefully wiped her eyes dry and answered her mother. She had then taken the time to be honest, telling Catelyn about her and Sandor seeing each other, and her mother actually smiled at some of the memories that Sansa shared with her. Sansa had told her mother how Sandor was different from her other boyfriends, how he didn’t expect things of her, never wanted to make her feel uncomfortable, didn’t hurt her, and never tried to pressure her.

 

This information had seemed to make Catelyn relax even further, but her mother still wanted to have a talk to her about safe sex and birth control. Sansa had been embarrassed, but at the same time, she understood why her mother wanted to talk to her about it. It had been a very long discussion, and most of it had been stuff Sansa was already aware of, but Catelyn was very insistent on Sansa coming to her whenever she decided that she wanted to be sexually active so that they could put her on birth control. Catelyn had explained to Sansa that she was her first girl and her eldest girl, and talking with her brothers about safe sex and birth control had been much different than talking with Sansa about it. Catelyn wanted to be both supportive and careful with her girls on the matter. If Sansa wanted to be sexually active one day, Catelyn wanted to make sure Sansa was using birth control.

 

“I’d rather you be active and safe and me _know_ about it,” Catelyn had said with a pointed look, “than you running around, doing whatever in secret, without any sensible protection to stop an unplanned pregnancy.”

 

Sansa was actually glad that her mother could be so open about it with her. Not many parents were like that with their daughters, and Sansa was grateful for her mother’s directness rather than embarrassed by it. They had discussed it further and hugged afterwards, and Catelyn had said she would approach the matter of her and Sandor seeing each other with her father a little later on once Sansa had gotten used to the idea of Catelyn knowing about it first. Catelyn didn’t want to put Sansa through too much all at once, and Ned probably wasn’t going to take it very well. Sansa figured that much as well, and she had agreed with her mother.

 

However, it had been a few days since their discussion and Catelyn still hadn’t talked with Ned about it yet. Also, Sansa really wanted to go over to Sandor’s place because today was one of his days off. She walked over to her mother in silence at first, and then she pretended that she had to talk to her about something. When Sansa finally got Catelyn away from her father, she asked her if it was okay for her to go over to Sandor’s this evening. Catelyn agreed to it, but she told Sansa to make sure she was home by ten o’clock at the latest. Normally, Catelyn was okay with Sansa staying out until midnight, especially during the summer or the weekends, but tomorrow was a school day, so it was a different story.

 

Sansa caught a ride with Gendry over to Sandor’s apartment, and she made sure to give him gas money this time because Gendry had done a lot for her over the summer. Gendry insisted he didn’t need it, but Sansa insisted on leaving it, and then she hurried into Sandor’s apartment complex. Sansa made her way through the hallways and up the elevator onto Sandor’s floor, and she came up to his door to knock on it three times in a row. Usually, Sandor answered pretty quickly, but today there was no answer at first. Sansa frowned, and then she knocked again. Sandor didn’t know she was coming over today, but she knew today was his day off and he had said earlier this week that she could come over today after school.

 

Still, there was no answer. Sansa started to feel a little worried now. Once more she raised her knuckles to rap them against the door, and shortly afterwards, she heard some movement within his apartment. Sansa waited nervously by the door until it opened in front of her.

 

Sandor stood there looking groggy and exhausted despite the fact that it was almost five o’clock and broad daylight outside. He was wearing just a white t-shirt and a pair of boxers, and when he saw Sansa, his eyes suddenly widened a little more. “Sansa,” he said slowly, still holding onto the door instead of opening it for her like he normally did, “what are you doing here?”

 

His reaction was not what Sansa had been expecting, so she just opened her mouth for a moment before speaking. “You said I could come by today,” she offered quietly, “earlier in the week.” Suddenly, Sansa remembered her mother had had a talk with Sandor, too. “My mother said it was okay,” Sansa added quickly, and then she shook her head. “I didn’t sneak over.”

 

It took Sandor a moment to process this information. Clearly, he was still half-asleep. He brought his hand to his head, rubbing his forehead with his palm as he squeezed his eyes shut. Finally, when he dropped his hand from his head, he stepped back and opened the door for her to pass through beside him. “Sorry,” Sandor said, “I’m not really awake right now.”

 

Sansa walked into his apartment, and Sandor closed the door behind her. “That’s okay,” Sansa told him softly, afraid to talk too loud at him with him looking so tired. “Long night at work?” she asked, wondering why he was sleeping this late into the day. Usually, he was up much earlier than this.

 

“Yeah,” Sandor told her, and he brought his hands to his face again to rub it. When he lowered them again, he looked straight at Sansa. “I’ve only been asleep for about three hours. I’m exhausted, so I’m not going to be much fun to be around today.”

 

“That’s okay,” Sansa said with a grin. “We don’t have to do anything.”

 

Sandor snorted at that, but he looked amused all the same. “What, you came over to be bored today?”

 

Sansa shrugged her shoulders, glancing over to her left temporarily. “You can lie back down, if you want,” she suggested, meeting his eyes again.

 

“And what are you going to do?”

 

Sansa grinned once more. “I could join you,” she answered, like it was another suggestion, and she lifted her shoulders upward as she tilted her head to the side. Sandor stared at her for a few seconds, and then he huffed in amusement, shaking his head at her. Sansa’s grin grew even more, and Sandor actually grinned back at her, though he was still shaking his head.

 

“Fine,” he answered, and he crossed the distance, wrapping his arms around her body. Sansa smiled against his chest and enveloped him into her embrace as well. She felt Sandor’s chin on her head at first, and then she felt him press the lower half of his face against the top of her head. He breathed in and out, and then he finally pulled away and took her by the hand, leading the way to his bedroom. She held onto his hand until they got there, and then Sansa separated from Sandor to walk around to the opposite side of the bed than him.

 

She took off her purse and laid it aside on the floor, and then she watched as Sandor immediately climbed back into his bed, settled on his right side with his face towards her, and closed his eyes. Sansa looked down and carefully kicked off her shoes, not wanting to bring those into the bed with her, and then she climbed into Sandor’s bed with him. Sansa lifted the sheet upward, sliding under it and pulling it over her, and settled her head onto the pillow on her side of the bed. Sandor slowly opened his eyes again to gaze at her, and Sansa smiled at him across the pillows.

 

“You’re going to lay that far away,” Sandor said quietly, and it almost sounded like a question being posed. Sansa looked down between them. There was at least two feet of space separating their bodies. Sansa looked up again, biting onto her bottom lip, and then she scooted closer under the sheet. Sandor’s arm came around her middle and pulled her the rest of the way until she was pressed against him. Sansa had to wiggle until she was comfortable, but then her arm finally snaked over his side to hold onto him as well. Her hand splayed against his back, and Sandor rubbed his hand up and down on her back for a moment before it stilled against her. Shortly afterward, she felt it moving again, and his hand came up to her shoulder to curl his fingers there and hold her like that.

 

Sansa opened her eyes, looking forward at his white t-shirt and its collar. Sandor was breathing slowly, and after some time had passed, she wondered if he had fallen asleep on her. Sandor wasn’t moving anymore aside from the soft rise and fall of his chest, and his grip on her shoulder loosened until his hand slid down onto her back again, falling from her shoulder. Sansa lay still for a while, but eventually, she didn’t have the patience to lie still like a statue in bed while he slept beside her. It didn’t mean she wanted to get up from the bed, but she wasn’t tired either, so she wasn’t going to fall to sleep like Sandor.

 

Instead, her hands grew curious. There was nothing sexual about the curiosity. It was just a comfortable exploration of Sandor’s body while he slept on beside her. At first, her hand gently rubbed its way over his back, feeling the firmness of his skin underneath his shirt. Then, her hand rose to his shoulder. She tilted her head back to look as she ran her fingers over his shoulder, circling it with soft touches. Her hand lowered to Sandor’s arm next, gently sliding all the way down it to his elbow. She couldn’t go any further because that was the arm wrapped around her body, so she slid her hand back up his arm to his shoulder again.

 

Sansa pulled back just enough to allow her hand to fall to his chest, where she spread her fingers across his t-shirt slowly to explore the solid and taut muscles beneath the fabric. Sandor’s body was built for strength, which some of it came from working out, but Sandor was naturally a large man as well. She didn’t feel short or tiny beside him due to her own height, but there was an obvious proportional difference between them. Sansa kind of liked that about Sandor, though. It made her feel oddly protected in his arms, like if it came to it, Sandor could shield her. Or, even now, when he was just holding her, she felt enveloped in his arms, warm and safe. Her ex-boyfriends had always been thin wisps of boys, their bodies the same size as hers, and Sansa found she liked Sandor better in comparison to them. There was something comforting about his size that hadn’t ever been there before with her previous boyfriends.

 

Thinking back to earlier in the week on the thoughts she had because of her mother’s confrontation with her, Sansa wondered what to call these feelings she had for Sandor. She wasn’t in love with him, but she cared about him a lot, and she didn’t know what to call them other than _feelings_. It was kind of annoying that she couldn’t figure out a name for it all, but she wondered if it was really all that important to name it anyway. Maybe the feeling itself was all that mattered, and Sansa was reading far too into it. She was still young, after all, and they hadn’t known each other for an extremely long time. Sansa felt she had known Sandor long enough to know him as a person for who he was now, though. Perhaps she didn’t know everything there was to know about his past, but Sansa didn’t want to dig for information that was no longer relevant to who he was today. If one day he grew comfortable enough to tell her or she curious enough to ask, then they would come to that bridge and cross it.

 

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she also realized this was only the second time they shared a bed together. The only other time had been when she accidentally spent the night at his place when she fell asleep in his arms after coming over really late. Sansa registered that her hand had stilled against his chest right above his heart, feeling the gentle beat of it underneath her palm. Leaning forward, she pressed the lower half of her face to the back of her hand and closed her eyes, finding herself soothed with the sound of his steady breathing and the pound of his heart. She felt Sandor’s fingers curl slightly against her back in his sleep, and Sansa opened her eyes again.

 

Pulling her head away from his chest, Sansa moved her hand again. She slid it downward between their bodies to carefully bypass underneath the arm that was resting over her body, and then she slid it onto his side. Suddenly, Sansa was struck with a further urge to touch Sandor, and she glided her hand up and down along his side. His shirt raked up a little bit, and her hand passed over his warm skin close to the waistband of his boxers. Sansa’s hand froze there on his bare skin. After a moment of stillness, she gently traced her fingertips against his warm flesh. Sansa made little circles with her fingers, and then she just barely grazed his skin with her nails.

 

Her hand slid further underneath his shirt. Sansa made patterns with her fingers against his skin, and she grew bolder with her touch. Her hand flattened against him, sliding wholly along the expanse of Sandor’s heated skin. When her hand went back downwards, she used her nails to gently scrape her way down. Sansa grazed her nails along his waistband. She didn’t go beneath it, nor did she push it aside. Sansa wasn’t bold enough for that yet, but she wanted to touch him all the same, and this was nice. She moved her fingers along his waist from his side to his back before bringing her hand forward once more, closer to his stomach. Finally, Sandor seemed to stir in his sleep with her ministrations.

 

His arm reflexively tightened around her body, and Sandor pulled her closer to him, closing the small bit of space that Sansa had put between them to allow her to touch his body. Sansa shifted to get comfortable in her new position, and then she felt something hard press against her leg. She froze completely, realizing what she had done. Her touches had turned him on in his sleep. Sandor’s hand was on her back, and slowly, she felt his fingers flex before his hand moved against her. Sansa wasn’t sure if he was awake or half-asleep, but she felt his hand grip her back all of a sudden and pull her even closer, and Sandor made a deep noise in the back of his throat.

 

Sansa didn’t know what she should do, but her body was tingling and her heart was racing. Sandor’s hand traveled up her back, and she lifted her head to look up at him. Sandor brought his head down closer to her, and before she knew it, his lips had caught hers in a kiss. It was slow and careful, and Sansa returned it. His hand went further up her back, gripping her near her shoulder, and then she felt it travel downwards, sending shivers through her spine all the way down. Sansa delved her tongue into his mouth, arching her back, and Sandor seemed to come alive even more. He deepened their kiss as well, and then his hand went lower—and he gripped one cheek of her bottom, pulling her flush against him. Sansa gasped against his mouth, feeling his hardness pressed between their bodies.

 

Normally, Sansa would immediately think they were going too far if she felt Sandor being turned on by their actions, and that was when she always asked if they could stop—but wasn’t it _normal_ for him to be turned on, especially since he liked girls and she _was_ one? They weren’t doing anything aside from kissing, a little bit of hand wandering, and letting their bodies touch, and Sansa really liked it. She didn’t want it to stop this time. She reached up to hold the side of his face with her hand, and she kissed Sandor with more eagerness to show him she liked it and that she wasn’t afraid of his touch.

 

Sandor’s hand left her bottom and returned to the middle of her back, where he pressed it to hold her against him. His mouth, despite its equal eagerness to kiss her back, was still somehow gentle with her. Their tongues grazed in her mouth, and Sansa moaned softly at the contact. Sandor let out a small groan in response, and then he pulled back from her lips, his hazy eyes staring out at her. “Is it okay if I touch you?” he asked her, his voice a deep murmur, and Sansa wanted to say _yes_ , but touch could mean so many different things, and she didn’t know what he meant by it. He had also grabbed her bottom without asking, but Sansa wondered if that wasn’t just some half-asleep instinct at the time.

 

Still, Sansa found herself nodding her head, but then she quickly added, “Not . . . not between the legs, though.” She hadn’t wanted him to take her invitation the wrong way and go straight for that. Sandor, however, barely seemed to care. He nodded his head, leaning in close enough for their noses to brush.

 

“Okay,” he said breathlessly, and Sandor’s mouth was on hers again, his tongue passing her lips and tasting her mouth. His hand moved freely from her back to her side, gliding upwards, and then it slowly slid downwards again as they kissed upon his pillows. His hand passed over her hip, past her shorts, and down along her leg. Sandor’s fingers hooked under her knee, and he gently pulled her leg towards him. Sansa took the indication, slipping her leg over his hip, and Sandor gripped onto her leg as he deepened the kiss. Sansa moaned quietly, and her hand found its way back to his side, sliding underneath the hem of his shirt again.

 

Sandor’s hand and fingers explored her leg, sometimes grasping it, sometimes gliding his dull nails against her skin, and sometimes rubbing his palm along its length. His hand wandered across her thighs and hips, unafraid to touch now, and Sansa liked it. Eventually, with his hand on her leg and her hand running against his bare skin beneath his shirt, Sandor shifted his weight until he was above her and she was below him. The sheet pulled against them, falling down somewhat, but Sandor’s lips never left hers. His mouth was hot and warm, and Sansa hooked her leg around his body. Sandor’s boxers were thin, and when his weight pressed down on her from above, she could feel everything. Instinctively, Sansa went rigid all over.

 

Sandor slowly pulled back from her lips, gazing down at her. He moved his lower body weight onto his knees to take it off of her. The hand that wasn’t propped against the bed came up to her hair, touching the side of her head. Sandor waited patiently until Sansa looked at him again, and then he shook his head at her. “I won’t hurt you, Sansa,” he assured her softly. “I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do. If you don’t want me doing something, just say it, and I won’t get mad.”

 

Joffrey had been abusive, and Joffrey hadn’t cared how he had treated Sansa. While Sansa had never been sexually abused, she had been _abused_ , and it pervaded into these moments with Sandor on a subconscious level that she didn’t always pick up on herself. Sometimes, though, Sansa realized it. Sansa wondered if Sandor said these things because he realized it, too, and then some part of her realized he did, and she relaxed beneath him.

 

“Kiss me again,” she asked him, and Sandor did—capturing her lips in a slow, unhurried kiss above her. He kept his weight on his knees and off of her, seeming to realize what was making her so uncomfortable. Sansa kissed him back, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling his upper body close to her again. Sandor inched his way out of her arms, though, moving downward. Gently, he kissed her chin, her neck, her collarbone, and never once did he use his teeth this time.

 

Sandor moved further down her body, causing Sansa to look up in confusion. She had told him nothing between the legs, and she knew he wouldn’t break her rule, but she couldn’t figure out what he was doing. Sandor stopped with his head above her stomach, and he looked up at her with his hazy dark eyes as his hand slid upward along her body and pushed her shirt out of the way. He pushed it all the way up to the area below her breasts, exposing her bare tummy to the air. Finally, Sandor bent his head down, kissing her on her stomach. Sansa closed her eyes, letting her head fall back to the pillow.

 

His hand glided over her skin as his mouth trailed kisses along her stomach. Sansa felt little pinpricks all over her flesh, and she arched into the sensation of his hand and lips. She felt his tongue gently graze her skin, and then he found her bellybutton, and Sansa moaned aloud at that, her whole body shuddering at the attention he paid to her. It was so simple, but it felt so good. Sansa hadn’t expected that. It was just her tummy, but it was so sensitive. Every press of his lips and flick of his tongue and glide of his fingers felt like heaven against her skin. Sansa felt his hands grip her hips to hold her in place, and she arched at that as well.

 

Eventually, he pulled away from her, and Sansa felt his hand pulling her shirt back down to cover her once more. She opened her eyes, and Sandor was moving up the bed again, but he was over to her side once more instead of above her. He settled on the bed beside her, wrapping his arm around her again and pulling her close, and Sansa snuggled into his embrace. She tilted up her head to his, reaching forward to kiss him. Sandor slid his hand behind her neck and kissed her back, and he seemed satisfied with that alone like he didn’t need more than what little they had already done.

 

“I won’t get any sleep with you in my bed,” Sandor said in a low voice once he had pulled away from her, and Sansa found herself smiling. She was much more comfortable now, and she pressed her hand against Sandor’s chest to gently push him onto his back. Sandor looked at her in confusion, but Sansa crawled onto his hips to straddle him. Sandor lowered his eyelids as he stared at her. “You like being in control, don’t you?” he asked her.

 

Sansa grinned at that. Slowly, without words, she nodded her head.

 

Sandor stared at her for a moment longer. Slowly, he folded his arms behind his head as he regarded her from the bed. “You know, I told you once you could tie my hands down if you wanted to,” Sandor reminded her. Sansa bit down onto her bottom lip as she gazed at him. Reaching for her belt, Sansa removed it from her shorts, and Sandor’s eyes went wide. “What are you—”

 

Leaning forward next, she took Sandor’s wrists and placed them against a bar on his metal headboard frame. Sansa looped the belt around the bar and then tied it around his wrists, locking them in place against the headboard. When she glanced down at Sandor’s face, he looked shocked, but his eyes were darker, too. Sansa leaned close to his face. “I’m tying you up,” she whispered.

 

“I didn’t think you would actually do it,” Sandor said quietly.

 

“Were you joking?” Sansa inquired, tilting her head to the side.

 

“I don’t know . . . ”

 

Sansa laughed at his confusion, and she pressed her lips to his for another kiss. Sansa ran her fingers through his hair, and Sandor moaned pleasurably at the contact of her fingers against his scalp. She bit on his bottom lip and tugged at it, causing him to groan, and Sansa heard a noise as his hands tried to pull away from the headboard, though without success.

 

“Fuck,” Sandor said against her mouth, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

 

“You want to touch me, don’t you?” Sansa asked softly, feeling more adventurous with each passing second.

 

“God, yes.”

 

“But you can’t . . . ” she whispered, flicking her tongue against his lips. Sandor tried to reach up to kiss her, but Sansa pulled away.

 

“Untie me,” he whispered low, but Sansa shook her head.

 

“No,” she whispered back, leaning away from him. Sansa pushed his shirt up with her hands, running both palms against his chest up to his collarbone and then back down again all the way to his stomach. Sandor’s eyes drifted to a close, and Sansa let her hands explore his chest and stomach to her satisfaction. Gently, she scraped her fingernails along his skin, rubbed her palms across every curve and muscle, and traced patterns across his chest with her fingers. When she was happy enough with touching him there, she scooted further down his body until she was straddling his lap.

 

Sansa settled herself there, feeling how he was still turned on by her, and was struck with a sudden desire to do something she had only done once before. She rocked her hips against him, and Sandor groaned aloud before realizing what she was doing—and his eyes shot open. Sansa stared back at him, finding that from this angle she liked it, and she ground her hips down again. She watched as a small shudder passed through him, and Sandor laid his head back down on the bed as Sansa rocked against him a third time. Sansa slid her hands to his waist, and she kept up her steady pace for some time, liking how it felt herself. It turned her on as well, and Sandor didn’t seem to have a single complaint—except maybe the fact that his hands were tied down.

 

Sansa leaned forward over his body again, pushing his shirt up out of the way to kiss his chest as she rocked her hips, and the deep groan that reverberated through Sandor’s chest sent tingles throughout her whole body. Sansa did to his chest what he had done to her stomach until every breath out of Sandor’s lungs was shaky and uneven. Eventually, Sansa realized she had to stop—because her thoughts were turning more lustful, and she didn’t want to be that kind of girl. Two months of dating was not long enough to be going under the clothes, and besides, she had never gone under the clothes before.

 

Although a little reluctant about it, Sansa halted the movements of her body. She stared down at Sandor for a little while, but then carefully removed herself from his lap to lie down on the bed beside him. Sansa reached up and pulled loose the knot on her belt holding him in place on the headboard. Sandor didn’t move his hands from where they rested near the bar, though, now that they were free. Sansa looked at him, but he was as still as he could be until he finally opened his eyes to the ceiling. Sandor stared upward for a long moment, just blinking at the ceiling above.

 

“I’ll be right back,” Sandor suddenly said, sitting up in bed. Sansa sat up herself. Before she could ask where he was going, though, he got up from the bed and vanished into the hallway beyond his bedroom door. Sansa frowned at his retreating figure. She heard the bathroom door close, and then she fell back to the bed, sighing deeply, and curled into his sheets as she buried her head into one of his pillows.

 

Her excitement had, in a way, also made her a little drowsy. While she didn’t completely doze off, some part of her mind shut down as she laid there in his bed all curled up under his covers. At some point, Sansa felt a figure settle into the bed beside her and his arm go around her middle again and pull her close. Sansa knew it was Sandor without having to open her eyes, and she snuggled backwards into his arms. It was nice to be held in his arms, and Sansa allowed herself to have a short nap in his embrace until it was time to go home.

 

 


	41. Everyone Learns Faster on Fire

_* * *_

 

Jaime was pissed off. For starters, Brienne was out having lunch with Sandor Clegane when they had planned a lunch date with Tyrion and Dany today. Brienne had forgotten about the date with Tyrion and Dany, and though Brienne felt bad about it, she said she would rather cancel her and Jaime’s lunch date with his brother and his brother’s wife than cancel _her_ lunch date with Sandor Clegane because apparently, according to Brienne, Tyrion and Dany would understand. Jaime had to call and cancel the date with his brother and his brother’s wife because Brienne refused to back out on her lunch date with Sandor on account of not wanting to upset the man. Jaime couldn’t imagine Sandor being upset at a cancelled _lunch_ date, but Brienne said they could make it up to Tyrion and Dany at a later date during any time of the week. On top of that, she had left the house without so much as an apology and left Jaime to cancel everything on his own. Simply put, it was bullshit.

 

If Brienne was going out on a lunch date with Sandor Clegane, then Jaime was going out to the firing range. Jaime wasn’t alone at the firing range either. Jaime had asked Loras Tyrell if he wanted to come along with him, and while Loras had looked surprised with the offer at first, he had agreed with a happy, “Sure.” Well, if _Brienne_ didn’t want to spend time with Jaime, then at least _Loras_ did—despite the fact that Jaime and Loras didn’t always get along and Loras mercilessly teased Jaime whenever he got the chance.

 

Like yesterday, when they had bought donuts, Loras had somehow gotten a hold of a hotdog as well. He had called out, “Hey, Jaime!”

 

Jaime, of course, had looked over at him. “What?” he had called right back.

 

Loras had held up one of the donuts and the hotdog. “Your mouth,” he had called out, holding the donut a little higher. “My cock,” he had said next, holding up the hotdog a little higher this time. Loras had then made an obscene gesture with the two items, saying, “Uh, uh, uh!”

 

Everyone in the entire room had then proceeded to laugh raucously, and Jaime had given Loras the finger in response and called out, “Looks like you and your boyfriend to me! Oh, is that chocolate or shit?”

 

“Fuck off, Lannister!” Loras had called back, laughing despite himself.

 

“Uh, uh, _uh_!” Jaime had said next, causing more laughter among their colleagues.

 

“I’m never eating another chocolate-covered donut _again_ ,” Brienne had bemoaned as a result of Jaime’s joke. Jaime had joined in on the laughing after that, slapping his hand down on the desk.

 

Right now, though, Jaime was holding his gun and aiming it at the target ahead of him. He wore yellow safety goggles and black ear muffs, and he narrowed his gaze at the target board. Jaime wanted to make a precision shot, and for a moment, he briefly imagined the target was Sandor Clegane. He aimed for the head, judged the distance, the kick, and fired a round. The bullet pierced the circle right outside of the center bulls-eye, and Jaime lowered his gun, pleased with himself. His mouth curved into a small smile, and he pulled back his ear muffs and glanced over at Loras Tyrell.

 

Loras had just watched Jaime’s shot, and he had a look of awe on his face at the shot. “I’m impressed,” Loras told him, giving Jaime a smile of appreciation as he raised his eyebrows. Loras turned his head to look at Jaime’s target board, surveying the impact of the shot, and then he whistled low. “That was a clean shot,” Loras added as he nodded his head. Looking down once more, Loras popped the empty magazine out of his gun to refill it with bullets.

 

Jaime saw no reason not to share his thoughts with Loras. “I was imagining it as Sandor Clegane’s head,” he admitted, and suddenly, Loras stilled beside him.

 

“Who?” Loras asked, turning to eye Jaime with a confused look.

 

“Just some psycho felon,” Jaime said, shaking his head. “He had gotten off with probation when he should have gotten life in prison.”

 

“What did he do?” Loras asked, sounding bored but willing to entertain Jaime’s train of thought. He was carefully reloading the magazine on his semi-automatic pistol.

 

“Went to a man’s house and murdered him in cold blood,” Jaime informed him. “Before that, though, he was working for some big name head of an organized crime group in the city. We’ve never been able to find out the man’s name, though—or if it’s even a man. It could be a woman, for all we know. Whoever it is, they know how to hide their identity and work with all the right people. We’ve never been able to get one of their rats to give up a name.”

 

“Sounds like a big deal,” Loras said casually, though he still sounded bored about it all, “but what’s your fixation with him?”

 

“What do you mean?” Jaime asked Loras, glancing over at the other man.

 

Loras shrugged, reloading his pistol with a _click_ of the magazine going back into the gun. He raised the pistol, taking a careful aim at his target ahead with it, but he didn’t look like he was going to fire a shot just yet. “Well, you’re entertaining the thought of killing the guy,” Loras said. “He must have done something personal to you or someone you loved, right?”

 

Jaime looked ahead at his own target, staring at the hole in the board he had put there just moments ago as he imagined the target as Sandor Clegane’s head. Jaime thought of Sansa, of how he hadn’t found a way to do anything about that situation yet, and he felt his nose twitch at the thought. There was nothing he really could do about it. _Nothing until it’s too late_ , Jaime thought, and a cold feeling slipped into his heart like ice. He was waiting on the sidelines and hoping he wasn’t called in at the last minute as the ambulance coming to clean up the mess instead of the police officer coming to stop it from even happening.

 

“Something like that,” Jaime answered quietly, but he didn’t elaborate further and Loras didn’t ask anymore questions. They put their ear muffs back on, resuming their firing practice with the target boards until they had emptied a sufficient load of magazine clips to create a ball pit full of nothing but shells. When the two of them were done for the day, Jaime clapped Loras on the back and wished him well. Loras returned the gesture before heading out to his car, and Jaime thought regardless of all of the bickering and teasing between them that Loras wasn’t such a bad guy. He also thought he should hang out with Loras more often whenever he got the time for it.

 

Jaime made his way over to his car to leave the firing rang as well. He settled himself into his seat, shutting the door behind himself. Jaime didn’t want to go straight home. He was still mad at Brienne, and if she was already home, then Jaime didn’t want to see her just yet. He tried to think of something he could do to kill more time, and then it came to him. It was a horrible idea, but then it wasn’t, and Jaime couldn’t decide if he wanted to do it or not. He sat there in his car for almost twenty minutes, debating it in his head and weighing the possible outcomes and probabilities if he went through with it. Finally, Jaime made his decision, and he reached for his keys in the ignition and started the car.

 

As he drove down Kingsroad Highway, Jaime turned off onto Baelor Street and headed for to Blackwater High. The high school was about to let out its students in thirty minutes or so, but Jaime had the patience to wait for the bells to ring. His nephew, Joffrey, went to this school, but that wasn’t why he was going there. He was going there because Sansa went to Blackwater High, too, and she was the reason why Jaime pulled up in his vehicle today. Jaime parked the car, but he waited inside of it until enough time had passed by that he could comfortably stand for the rest of it.

 

When it was ten minutes until the bells rang to herald the end of the school day, Jaime got out of his vehicle. He shut the door behind himself, heading for the front of the school. Jaime slipped his hands into his pockets and waited calmly by the entrance. Finally, the bells rang, and in less than ten seconds, students were already pouring out of the front doors. Jaime waited and gazed about the crowd of heads, looking for Sansa’s unmistakable auburn head. She was taller than most of the other kids, too, so she would be easy to spot. Jaime saw her almost the moment she passed through the doors.

 

Holding up his arm, Jaime put on a smile for outward appearances. “Sansa!” he called out to her, and she quickly lifted her head. A look of curiosity bloomed across Sansa’s face as she sought for the voice that called out her name, but then she spotted Jaime by the sidewalk. Sansa slowly smiled at the sight of him, and she cut through the crowd to reach his side.

 

When Sansa got through the crowd and approached him, she immediately put her arms around Jaime for a hug. Jaime hadn’t been expecting a hug, so it threw him off for a moment, but he returned it. Sansa pulled back, hooking her fingers onto the strap of her messenger bag, and gave Jaime a happy but quizzical look.

 

“What are you doing here, Uncle Jaime?” she asked him, and Jaime decided for now that he was going to lie until he was ready to speak the truth to her.

 

“I came to see if you wanted a ride home,” Jaime told Sansa, lifting his eyebrows as he smiled at her. “I’m sure you get tired of riding the bus and not having your own car.”

 

Sansa grinned at him. “Well, Margaery was going to give me a ride,” she said, “but since you’ve come all the way out here, I’d hate to tell you no and make it a wasted trip.”

 

Jaime returned her grin. “Good,” he said, and he made a motion with his head for Sansa to follow him. “C’mon,” he added good-naturedly, and Jaime turned around to head back towards his car with Sansa not far behind him.

 

When he reached his car again, Jaime settled himself into the seat on the driver side and waited on Sansa to do the same on the passenger side. When she had seated herself and closed the door, Jaime cranked the car and pulled out of the parking lot. He had to be careful because of the flood of students pouring across the grounds, but he somehow managed to navigate his way out of the swarm of bodies without hitting anybody. Sansa buckled herself in the seat beside him and picked up her phone. Most likely, she was texting Margaery to tell her she had gotten another ride. Jaime tried to think of something to say to pass the time in a casual attempt at conversation before he got to the real topic he wanted to discuss with her.

 

“How has school been so far?” Jaime asked her.

 

“Oh, it’s been great,” Sansa gushed to him, putting away her phone. “I’ve got _all_ of the classes I wanted, and I’ve got all of my favorite teachers, and I even have an art class with Arya. They have mixed grades in that class, so that’s cool, though they only do that with extracurriculars.”

 

“Why would you want a class with your _sister_?” Jaime mocked her, and Sansa laughed at him.

 

“Arya and I actually get along,” she told him. “I thought you knew that!”

 

“I did,” Jaime said, grinning as he cut his eyes at her. “I’m playing.”

 

“Okay,” Sansa said with another laugh, “if you say so.”

 

It was quiet for a moment as Jaime turned onto a new street. He tried to think about what to say next. “So,” he drawled out, “have you got a new boyfriend or anything? I mean, you and Joffrey aren’t together anymore.”

 

“No, we’re not,” Sansa agreed, “and I’m glad. Things weren’t . . . working out with him.”

 

“He was a right royal prick, Sansa,” Jaime said. “You can admit it. I’m glad you’re not with him anymore. I love my nephew, but he’s a piece of shit.” Jaime glanced over at her to see Sansa gazing at him with a measure of shock, but also with some measure of what looked like hopefulness. It was a confusing look, and Jaime wasn’t sure why Sansa was giving him that look.

 

“Thank you,” she said softly, and Jaime nodded his head at her.

 

“It’s true,” Jaime went on, not wanting to lie to her about that. “If I could punch Joffrey in the head without upsetting my sister, I would,” Jaime added, and he looked back at Sansa once more to give her a pointed look to show her he meant it.

 

Sansa smiled with Jaime’s admission of how he felt about Joffrey and Joffrey’s behavior, but she lowered her gaze to her lap and fell silent after that. Jaime realized she hadn’t actually answered his question, so he ventured once more. “So, I take it there’s no new lucky boy in your life?” he asked her, and Sansa lifted her gaze to look out of the windshield, but she slowly shook her head.

 

“No,” Sansa told him, “I’m not seeing anyone. I just want to focus on school right now.”

 

It was a lie, and Jaime knew it. He frowned, wishing Sansa would be honest with him about it, but he figured she wasn’t on account of him knowing her parents and what she feared he might say to them. As much as Jaime had wanted to go to her parents in the beginning, he didn’t want to do that because it would cause Sansa not to trust him anymore, and so he had pushed away that urge and refused to act on it. However, he felt this issue with Sandor Clegane needed to be addressed, and there was no way to address it other than to talk straight to Sansa about it.

 

“Look, Sansa,” Jaime began slowly, “I saw you on the beach with Sandor Clegane.”

 

There was no answer from the seat beside him, and Jaime didn’t bother to look over this time. He was certain he knew Sansa’s look had tightened on her face into an expression of fear or dread, and her hands were probably wringing in her lap right about now. Sighing softly in preparation for what he was about to say, Jaime found a way to continue despite the tightening in his own throat.

 

“I’m worried about you, Sansa,” Jaime told her, and in his voice was all of his concern, sympathy, and sincerity regarding this whole situation between her and Sandor Clegane, “and I’m going to tell you in all honesty that it’s not because of Sandor’s age, or Sandor’s job as a bartender and pub owner, or anything like that. It’s because he’s a dangerous man, Sansa. He’s a very dangerous man, and I’ve had a lot of run-ins with him, so I know him.” Jaime took a deep breath. “You don’t know him, Sansa, not like I know him.”

 

“What do you mean, you know him?” she asked quietly.

 

“I’ve arrested him multiple times in multiple locations for God knows how many offenses and crimes,” Jaime admitted to her. “Sansa, he’s violent. He’s vicious. He’s been affiliated with crime bosses. He’s an addict, and—” Jaime paused, wondering how far he should go, but Sansa should know these things. She ought to know them. She _needed_ to know them. “He’s a murderer, Sansa,” Jaime finally added in a quiet voice. “He should be rotting in a jail cell, but someone cut him a deal from the inside, and now he’s out on the streets again because of all that. It’s a corrupt system, and sometimes they slip through our fingers. Sandor was one of those. He got away with it.”

 

Sansa was deathly quiet in the seat beside him, and Jaime finally hazarded a look at her. She was sitting as still as a statue, except for the heavy breathing of her chest. Sansa looked visibly upset like she was going to cry, which was good because it meant Jaime was getting through to her. His words meant something to her, and she wasn’t just brushing him off.

 

“What did he do?” she asked in a soft voice, which Jaime just barely managed to hear without having to ask her to repeat herself.

 

“He followed a man home one night,” Jaime revealed to Sansa. “Another man in the business. Maybe a rival. We never found out—and he attacked him. He broke multiple bones, teeth, and other appendages, and then he took a knife and stabbed the other man in the throat to end his life. After that, he went home, took a shower, and went to sleep like nothing ever happened,” Jaime finished in a murmur. He remembered the case well, and he remembered every detail of it, but Sansa didn’t need to know all of the details. The ruling was bullshit. Everything about the aftermath of that case was utter bullshit.

 

Beside him, Sansa said nothing. Jaime glanced over at her. Sansa was staring at her lap again, and Jaime saw a tear falling down her cheek. He felt horrible, but he also felt justified. Sansa needed to know these things, but Jaime didn’t want to hurt her with the knowledge, yet there was no real way around that obstacle. The knowledge was going to hurt her either way. She liked this man for whatever reasons she had managed to develop in her head, but Sansa was young girl with fanciful dreams in her head, and the reality of Clegane was harsher than what she knew thus far.

 

“That’s the sort of man Sandor Clegane is, Sansa,” Jaime pushed forward once more. “A murderer, and you don’t need to be around him—or with him. I say this because you’re like family to me, and I care about you, and . . . ” Jaime didn’t expect the tears to sting at his own eyes. He didn’t expect to get upset over this, but there it was despite his wishes otherwise. “I don’t want _that_ to happen to you, Sansa. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something happened to you because I never spoke with you about this.”

 

Still, Sansa said nothing in the seat beside him. However, Winterfell Avenue was looming up ahead on the street to the left, and Jaime slowed down to turn onto it. He pulled his vehicle up to the driveway at her house, and when he parked the car, he looked over at Sansa. She wasn’t shaking or sobbing, but she was crying silent tears. Sansa reached up a hand to wipe them away from her cheeks. Jaime popped open his armrest cubby holder, looking for some loose napkins he had stored in there from eating out. He found a few, and then he handed them to Sansa.

 

She took them gratefully, using them to dab her eyes. Sansa sniffed, trying to calm herself down from the knowledge Jaime had shared with her, which had caused her to cry like this in the first place. Jaime expected her to say something, but Sansa was oddly quiet. Finally, she grabbed for the door handle and pushed open the car door, moving to get out of the vehicle.

 

“Sansa,” Jaime called out, and she looked back at him. Her eyes were still red, and despite her best efforts to dry her cheeks, in the sunlight Jaime could still see the trails of tear streaks on her face. Jaime couldn’t explain the inexplicable feeling of guilt that came over him all of a sudden. “I’m sorry,” he told her, not knowing what else to say. Sansa seemed to have no reaction to this whatsoever. Jaime couldn’t read anything on her face, and then she bit both of her lips together before shaking her head at him.

 

“Bye, Uncle Jaime,” Sansa said in her softest voice possible, and she closed the door to his car. Jaime watched as Sansa walked towards her house, but halfway there she began to run until she reached the door. Sansa pulled it open and disappeared inside, and Jaime finally looked away. He stared forward at the steering wheel before him. Eventually, Jaime let out a sigh. He pulled the car out of park, backing up out of the driveway to pull into the street.

 

Jaime hoped Sansa would not hold this against him, and that she would come to him when she was ready to talk about it, and that she would be grateful that he came to her instead of to her parents.

 

As he drove home, though, Jaime didn’t know what Sansa was going to do with the knowledge he had given her.

 

 


	42. Break a Silver Lining

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** At the end of this chapter, I’ve included a list of songs so far whose lyrics inspired the chapter names, covering Chapter 33 through Chapter 42!

_* * *_

 

The drive over to the Stark residence on Winterfell Avenue in the silence of his car was fraught with distress for Sandor. He had one hand on the wheel and the other hand propped against his chin as his elbow rested upon the open window frame on the door. His chief concern among all of the worries in his head was facing Ned again after having lied straight to the man’s face about seeing his daughter because he was facing him now under the new circumstances of actually _seeing_ his daughter. Catelyn said she would take care of it, but Sandor had a feeling things were not going to go smooth when he showed up today. Catelyn had insisted on it, and so Sandor had agreed for her sake, but he had a feeling that Ned wanted him anywhere but inside of his house, especially after Sandor’s little performance at the pub well over three weeks ago.

 

Not only that, but things were progressing at a more physical rate with Sansa. Sandor probably should have thought better than inviting her into his bed while he slept on, but he hadn’t seen any harm in it and he had been tired at the time. Sleep had been the first thing on his mind. Still, Sansa began fondling him in his sleep—something, had he done it with her, she would have flipped out—and Sandor slowly started to wake up when her hand was playing around the waistband of his boxers. His first instinct, however, was to kiss her—and so he kissed her. The kissing became fondling, which became more kissing, and he tried to explore without crossing her boundaries. When Sansa lightened up and pushed him to the bed, crawling on top of him, the last thing Sandor expected was for her to take off her belt and tie him to the headboard.

 

Of course, he was the one who jokingly suggested it. Of course, he also didn’t fight it. Despite the fact that the common sense thing to do would have been to pull his hands to himself and tell her no, Sandor let her do it, and . . . Sansa did a lot. She was bolder with his hands tied down, and he was more turned on than usual with his hands tied down. The kissing Sandor could handle, and those explorative hands of hers he could handle, too. What he couldn’t handle so well was Sansa grinding down right onto him with her little shorts, which provided barely any separation between them, while he wore nothing but a pair of thin boxers.

 

Normally, at that point between adults, the teasing stopped and the physical relief came next, but Sansa wasn’t ready for that. She had slid off of his lap like nothing happened, pulled loose the knot in her belt which held him down in place upon the bed, and then just looked at him like she was waiting on him to say something. Sandor had seen her out of the corner of his eyes. He had a raging hard on, and Sansa was just looking at him like she wanted to _talk_. Sandor did the only sensible thing he could think of, and that was to take some personal time in the bathroom to get rid of it. When he had returned, Sansa looked like she was curled up asleep upon his bed with the sheets wrapped around her.

 

Sandor wasn’t mad at her. Sansa was a virgin, and she was a young woman who had gone through abuse with her last boyfriend, and she wasn’t ready to go that far. Despite how frustrating the grinding thing had been for Sandor, that was his own damn fault. He shouldn’t have just let her tie him down if he didn’t want her letting go of her inhibitions in the process. Sansa was getting bolder with him, but Sandor wasn’t a teenager anymore and dry humping wasn’t his thing. It did absolutely nothing for him except for work up a lot of things that never got finished, and that wasn’t his idea of fun. As he had seen her there resting in his bed, Sandor crawled in behind her and pulled her to him once more. Sansa had snuggled into his embrace, and Sandor allowed himself to slip into another nap after the one she had waken him up from earlier.

 

The downside to that experience with Sansa was Sandor was realizing something about himself. In the beginning of their relationship, there had been visible boundaries even for him, not just for Sansa, and Sandor hadn’t wanted to cross those lines. Sansa was still young to him, even though Sandor had practically lost the majority of his inhibitions regarding their age difference when it came to her. His thoughts weren’t under his control anymore, though. Sandor had wanted Sansa even in those earlier days, but he had wanted her as a companion. He hadn’t wanted her as a sexual partner, and that was changing. The more things they did together, the more things Sandor thought about doing with her, and the more his thoughts took on a direction of their own. Sandor wasn’t sure when it first happened, but he wanted Sansa in more ways than one.

 

Sandor had been celibate for two years, and while the first year was intentional, the second had been purely accidental. Sandor had stopped sleeping around, and he hadn’t been looking for a girlfriend, so he just never did anything. After one year of an intentional lack of sex, Sandor wasn’t so easily tempted anymore. Turning down a drunken girl here or there was easy. And so, one year became two years, and that number was slowly creeping up. If it hadn’t been for those two years and him learning some much needed self-control, Sandor wasn’t sure if he and Sansa would have ever worked out. It probably would have been a train wreck that ended with Sansa’s tears.

 

When he pulled into the driveway at Sansa’s house, Sandor parked the car and looked up at the house through his windshield. Either today was going to go smoothly, or it was going to be a total disaster. Sandor was betting on the latter. He got out of his car and made his way towards the front door, but before he could even knock, it opened up before him.

 

Bran, Sansa and Arya’s little brother, was standing there this time. The boy looked at least twelve or thirteen, Sandor guessed, right on the cusp of dreaded puberty. Bran eyed Sandor curiously, and said the first thing that popped into his mind, which was, “Are you dating my sister now?”

 

“What?” Sandor asked, perturbed for that to be the first thing out of Bran’s mouth upon seeing him at their front door. Usually, people greeted each other first. “I don’t even get a ‘hello’?”

 

“Oh, sorry,” Bran said, extending his hand to Sandor. “Hello.”

 

Sandor shook his hand. “That’s better,” he told the boy.

 

“So,” Bran continued, “are you seeing my sister?”

 

“Yes,” Sandor answered honestly.

 

“Aren’t you a little _old_ for her?”

 

“That depends on your definition of old,” Sandor replied.

 

“You look as old as my parents,” Bran stated matter-of-factly.

 

“How old are your parents?”

 

“Dad is forty-eight, and Mum is forty-six,” Bran told him.

 

“Oh,” Sandor said. “See, I’m only thirty-three.”

 

“That’s still _old_ ,” Bran argued.

 

“How old are you?”

 

“Thirteen,” Bran replied quickly.

 

Sandor made a funny noise in his mouth. “Whippersnapper,” he threw back at the boy. “Your concept of age will change as you get older. Trust me on that.”

 

Bran made a face. “I wouldn’t date someone as old as _you_.”

 

“Oh, but you would date a guy?”

 

Bran’s face turned red, his eyes widening. “I didn’t say that!” Bran protested.

 

Inwardly, Sandor was greatly amused. He loved messing with kids’ heads. “Ah, but you were thinking it?” Sandor shot back, giving Bran a knowing look.

 

Bran turned even redder, and then he dashed away from the door, hollering, “ _Mum_! _Dad_! The strange man is here again!”

 

Sandor was trying his hardest to keep a straight face after that conversation until he was greeted at the door by Catelyn. Unlike her son, Catelyn made an effort to smile warmly at Sandor. She was probably impressed that he even bothered to show up today. “Please, come in,” Catelyn told him, and Sandor walked into the house as Catelyn closed the door behind him. She headed towards the dining room, and Sandor followed her because he wasn’t sure what else to do. Past the dining room was the kitchen, where Catelyn was apparently finishing up this evening’s meal with Arya’s help.

 

Arya picked up a big plastic bowl from the counter, turning around to bring it to the table. Upon seeing Sandor, Arya suddenly stopped what she was doing. Her eyes brightened at the sight of him, and she grinned at him. “Hey, Sandor!” she called out, and then she walked over to the table to put down the bowl. Sandor looked over to see what was inside of it. It was filled with a complicated looking fruit salad.

 

“Made that yourself?” he asked her.

 

“Yep!” Arya said. “I can’t cook, but I can make a mean fruit salad.”

 

“It’s probably poisoned,” Sandor suggested casually.

 

“Only for you,” Arya told him.

 

“I knew you were trying to kill me.”

 

“One of these days . . . ” Arya whispered loudly in a serious voice, and she shook her head at Sandor while narrowing her eyes at him. Sandor couldn’t stop himself from laughing at that, and Arya grinned at his response. Sandor registered out of the corner of his vision that Catelyn was observing them, and suddenly, he felt self-conscious.

 

Arya hurried back to her mother’s side at the counter to finish helping her prepare the table, and Catelyn called out to Sandor, “You can have a seat at the table, Sandor. Everything will be ready shortly, and we’ll call everyone down for supper.”

 

Sandor glanced down at the dining table, and then he wondered why Sansa wasn’t out here already. She knew he was coming over today, and she was up hiding in her room instead of down here. Sandor wasn’t bold enough to walk straight up to her bedroom door with this being her parents’ house and her mother right there, so Sandor did as Catelyn said and took a seat at the dining table. Arya and Catelyn finished preparing the table around him, with Arya continuing her teasing of Sandor as she helped her mother. One time, she put a bowl on his head and whacked it with a spatula, but Catelyn got onto her for it, so Sandor didn’t say anything. He did glare at Arya, though.

 

Catelyn called everyone down for supper, and Bran and Rickon came running as fast as the wind. Arya took a seat on Sandor’s left side, insisting on sitting beside him, and Catelyn sat at the head of the table off to Arya’s side. Rickon took the seat across the table from Arya, and Bran took the seat across from Sandor. When Sandor looked up at the next approaching person, it was Sansa.

 

Her eyes were downcast, and they didn’t meet Sandor’s gaze. She was wearing a floral print dress with a light blue cardigan, and her hair was down. She looked upset, but she was quiet. Instead of taking the seat beside Sandor to his right, she took the seat on the opposite side of the table right next to Bran. Sandor wanted to ask her what was wrong, but he couldn’t ask her something like that in front of her family. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, which didn’t seem to bother Bran or Rickon at all, Sandor noticed the table was still missing one person.

 

Ned Stark.

 

Catelyn sat there patiently waiting in silence for something, but when nothing happened, Catelyn finally looked up at everyone with a tight smile and said, “Dig in!” Bran, Rickon, and Arya all happily started grabbing plates and passing food as Catelyn helped them, and Sansa sat quietly in her seat and slowly grabbed for the nearest thing to her to pull towards her and put on her plate. The dinner itself was mostly uncomfortable, though Sandor tried to ignore it and focus on the conversation. Catelyn, Arya, Bran, and Rickon all talked to him and to each other, but Sansa remained ever quiet and Ned’s missing presence was felt by everyone but the two boys.

 

Finally, amidst a casual conversation between Sandor and Catelyn, Bran finally asked out of the blue, “Is Dad not coming down because of Sandor?”

 

Everyone fell quiet, and Catelyn stared at her boy. She slowly looked back at Sandor, catching his gaze, before turning back to Bran. “Yes, dear,” she answered honestly. “Father is upset.”

 

Bran shrugged. “Everyone else came down,” he said. “Why is father upset about it?”

 

Again, everyone was quiet until Catelyn answer him again. “It’s complicated, Bran.”

 

Bran wrinkled his nose. “Adults say that all the time,” he responded simply, “but I don’t see what’s so complicated about it. It’s simple. You came down. Arya came down. Rickon came down. Why can’t Dad come down?”

 

Catelyn looked like she didn’t want to answer that question, but finally she said, “Because your father is a stubborn mule who has to have everything _his_ way.” She threw her napkin down on the table, and then she pushed her chair back and stood up. “If you will all excuse me for a moment,” Catelyn added, looking out among them. Her eyes settled on Sandor at last, and she gave him a sympathetic look. With that, she disappeared from the dining room.

 

Arya whistled low at her departure. “Dad done pissed her off,” she said softly.

 

Rickon laughed hysterically at Arya’s comment, and Bran continued eating like nothing had just happened at all. “I like you,” Bran said to Sandor, his mouth full of food. It surprised Sandor, judging from the boy’s reaction at the door. “Don’t know why Dad has to be so pissy when they invited you over for supper. If they didn’t want you here, shouldn’t have invited you.”

 

“ _Mum_ invited Sandor,” Arya cut in, correcting Bran, “not Dad.”

 

“Same difference,” Bran said, shrugging his shoulders.

 

“There’s big difference, idiot.”

 

“Shut it, cannon head.”

 

“Please,” Sansa suddenly spoke up in a quiet voice, “stop it.”

 

Arya and Bran both fell silent at Sansa’s request, turning to look at her as well. Sandor didn’t expect them to respect Sansa’s request, but both kids turned their attention back to the plates and continued eating again instead of talking. Rickon was playing with his food, acting out a dinosaur and lava pit scene with his wild imagination, and occasionally digging in to eat parts of it. Sandor finished eating, too, amidst cries of, “Noooo, I’m melting, I’m _meeeelting_! Argh, I will save you! D’oh! My arms are too short! Har, har, har, you’re going to _die_!” from Rickon.

 

When everyone was done and cleaning up, Catelyn still hadn’t returned from wherever she had gone off to. Sandor didn’t want to linger, so he told them to tell their parents he said goodbye before heading for the door. Sansa hadn’t even bothered to say two words to Sandor the whole time he was here this evening, and so he found himself not making any effort right back. Maybe it was because her family was around, or maybe it was because he had hoped at least she would have wanted him there the most out of all of them. Instead, Sandor had spent the evening commiserating with either Catelyn or Arya while Sansa had ignored him and pushed the food around on her plate.

 

Sandor was out the door and halfway towards his car when he heard Sansa call out behind him, “Wait!” He stopped, turning around to face her. Sandor knew there was look of confusion on his face, and he didn’t bother to hide it. Sansa ran up to him, pulling her cardigan around herself. She stared at him for a moment, and then she asked, “Can I come with you?”

 

Sandor lifted his eyebrows. “Did you ask your mother?”

 

“I left a note.”

 

Sandor didn’t know if that counted or not, but he figured what the hell. Catelyn shouldn’t hold it against him. “All right,” he said, and he walked around his vehicle to climb into the driver seat. Sansa hopped in on the passenger side, and Sandor cranked the engine before pulling out of their driveway and taking off down the street. The drive was mostly quiet, and Sansa’s hands were fidgeting in her lap, which meant something was on her mind or something was bothering her. Sandor wondered when he learned that about her, but he shook his head at the thought. It seemed irrelevant, anyway.

 

They reached his apartment building, and Sandor parked the car on the curb outside. He led the way up to his apartment with Sansa keeping pace beside him. He had a feeling she wanted to talk to him about something, but she was waiting for them to get settled somewhere first. Sandor opened the door and walked in, letting her pass through before shutting the door behind her. He expected her to go to his couch and sit down or take one of the stools at the kitchen counter, but Sansa veered into his hallway. Sandor narrowed his eyes at her retreating figure as he tossed down his keys and wallet onto the counter.

 

His curiosity overtaking him, Sandor followed her down the hallway. He saw her through the threshold of his bedroom, sitting on his bed and waiting patiently for him. Sandor, however, stood by the door. He leaned on the frame, his hands tucked loosely into his pockets. Sansa looked a little disappointed at his distance, but Sandor wanted to know what was on her mind and he didn’t want her distracting him with something else to try and make him forget about how she had been acting at her house.

 

Sansa looked down at her lap, threading her fingers from both hands together and playing with them. “Uncle Jaime gave me a ride home the other day, and he told me some things about you,” she said slowly, “and I wanted to ask you about them instead of jumping to conclusions.”

 

The first thing that Sandor’s mind picked up on, however, was not that she heard more things about him. His brow furrowed deeply, his expression turning quizzical. “ _Uncle_ Jaime?” he asked her, and Sansa looked up to meet his gaze. She swallowed past a lump in her throat, and then she nodded her head.

 

“Yes,” Sansa told him. “I’ve called him that ever since I started dating Joffrey. Even though Joffrey and I aren’t together anymore, I still call him that.”

 

Sandor’s eyes darkened. “You never told me this,” he said.

 

“You never told me he’s arrested you multiple times either,” Sansa responded in a soft voice, and Sandor closed his eyes and lowered his head because she was right. He should have seen this coming, but he hadn’t known Jaime knew Sansa personally like that. It would be just like the prick to waltz right up to Sansa and spill out everything he knew in an attempt to scare her away from Sandor.

 

When Sandor raised his head again, he looked her in the eyes. “You’re right,” he said calmly. “What did you want to know?”

 

“He said you knew crime bosses, and he said you were an addict,” Sansa began, though she sounded hesitant about bringing up these things. However, there was a measure of resolve in her voice to see it through, and she pushed forward. “He also mentioned that time you killed a guy, which I heard from Margaery already. I wanted to ask you about these things because I’m tired of hearing about your past from other people, Sandor. I want to hear about them from you, so I know your side of the story. I don’t like getting upset every time someone tells me something about you that I didn’t already know.”

 

It was a reasonable request, but that didn’t make it any easier for Sandor to answer it. He wanted to be honest with Sansa, but at the same time he wanted to shield her from those things. It was impossible, though. At some point on some day, she was going to hear about something from someone, and Sandor couldn’t just go on hiding it all from her. Even if she wouldn’t find out about something from someone else, maybe it was best to just go ahead and tell her anyway to get it out of the way. She deserved to hear the truth, after all, and she deserved to hear it from him.

 

Sandor crossed the distance, kneeling on the floor in front of Sansa by the bed. He placed his palms on the mattress at either side of her and looked straight up into her face. “You already know I have a problem with alcohol. That was my addiction. I messed around with a couple of drugs, but I was never addicted to anything. I was just a casual user for a while.” The next part was a hard part to admit, and Sandor had to take a moment before he said it out loud to Sansa. “Yes, I worked for some people. I did jobs for them. I helped get information and hide information. I helped with business transactions. I helped silence people. Some of them, you could physically intimidate and shut them up. Others you could bribe, and there were some . . . you couldn’t intimidate or bribe. All you could do was make them disappear, and I did that sometimes.” Sandor’s mouth was dry. “I made some of them disappear.”

 

Sansa was looking down at him, trembling where she sat on the edge of his bed. Sandor never broke eye contact with her, though. She wanted to know, and so he was telling her, and it wasn’t going to be easy. “You . . . you killed more than one person?” Sansa asked him, her voice barely a whisper.

 

“Yes,” Sandor answered honestly.

 

Sansa’s breathing deepened and quickened at the same time, and she brought both of her hands to her chest to press them together there. “Would you ever hurt me?” she whispered, and Sandor’s horror at such a question floored him more than words could say. He could find no words at first. Sandor could only shake his head at her, and he reached out with his hands to hold Sansa’s sides as he looked up into her face.

 

“I would _never_ hurt you,” Sandor told her as firmly as possible, finding himself injured by the question. How could she even think that? “I don’t . . . I don’t hurt anybody anymore, Sansa. I didn’t enjoy my job. I didn’t _like_ it. It was just the life that was handed to me. I didn’t grow up with the choices you have. My life was harder, and I did what I could with the best that I had.”

 

Sansa seemed confused by this, like she couldn’t understand how hard choices could lead to a life like that. “What do you mean? Why was it harder?”

 

“Both of my parents were dead by the time I was twelve. I had nowhere to go,” Sandor told her. “I went into the foster care system. I met people like me there. That was how it got started. It was small things at first. Small crimes. They escalated as I got older.”

 

“How did your parents die?” Sansa asked softly, and the tension he felt in her body seemed to ebb away a little bit. The answer to that question wasn’t as easy to say, and Sandor hung his head for a moment before he willed himself to speak the words.

 

“They were murdered,” he said. Sandor looked up again to meet her eyes. Sansa’s look of horror returned, but she reached out to touch his face with her right hand—which made contact with the scarred side of his face. This time it didn’t bother him as much as it had the first time, and he didn’t try to pull away from the touch.

 

“How were they murdered?” Sansa, realizing her question, suddenly shook her head. “No, I mean, who would do something like that and why?”

 

Sandor stared at her for a long moment. “My brother,” he finally admitted out loud. “He killed them, and he killed my little sister, too.”

 

Sansa’s eyes went wide. “You had a sister?”

 

Sandor nodded his head. “I was young when it happened,” he said slowly. “Five or six. She was only three.” He started to shake his head. “I don’t remember what happened to her. I just remember one day she was gone, but I knew Gregor did it. Whenever she cried, he complained. Like someone ought to shut her up, and then one day she wasn’t crying anymore and he was happy. And I knew.”

 

Sandor realized that Sansa was crying silent tears. They spilled down her cheeks to meet her chin, hanging for a moment before falling to her lap. Her fingers moved softly against the side of his face. “Did . . . did he do this to you?” Sansa asked in a whisper, her fingers grazing along his scars.

 

“Yes,” Sandor told her, finding every words getting easier and easier to say. “I was six or seven. Gregor was much older than me by then. He didn’t care for toys anymore, so when we got some new ones, I didn’t want to play with mine. I wanted to play with his. I took some of them, and I hid under the kitchen table. I played there until he found me. He picked me up. We still had one of those old gas stoves. It wasn’t electric. He turned it on and shoved my face against the fire, and I screamed. I screamed for a while until our father showed up. He couldn’t overpower Gregor. Even then, Gregor was huge for his age. My father picked up a kitchen chair and hit Gregor with it. It took three chairs before he let me go. They rushed me to the hospital, and I spent the next few years of my life going back and forth for surgery and treatments. I was young, so they thought they could fix the majority of it. They did. I was lucky the fire didn’t get my eye. My cheek got the most damage.”

 

Sansa leaned forward as she sat on the edge of the bed, wrapping her arms around Sandor’s neck and pulling him close into her embrace. He felt her hand go through his hair. “Did he go to prison for those things?” Sansa whispered near his ear, and Sandor wished he could say yes, but he couldn’t say what wasn’t true.

 

“No,” Sandor admitted quietly. “My father lied. He said I was playing with matches and started a fire in my room. As for everything else, there was no evidence. I ran away. I knew if I stayed, eventually Gregor would finish what he had started.”

 

Sansa’s arms clung tighter around him, and Sandor felt his own hands raise long her back before his arms slipped around her and pulled her closer. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured, but Sandor didn’t know why she was apologizing. It wasn’t like it had been something she had done to him. It was just a sad story he was repeating to her, a story he didn’t realize until now that he had never shared with anybody else before. He didn’t even think he told Elder Brother the specifics about what happened to his face.

 

“That man I killed,” Sandor ventured with a hesitant note in his voice, “with the knife.” Sandor pulled back from Sansa, resting his hands on her hips this time. He looked her in the eyes once more. “Before I lived here, I lived in a small house on Ashemark Road. I had a neighbor, a sweet lady with some kids. I didn’t really know her, but I helped her with things from time to time. Fixing something if it broke, or just helping her carry groceries. She was a single mother, and it was hard on her. She had a crazy ex-boyfriend who came around from time to time. I minded my own business with that, and it got bad. I woke up one night, and their house was burning to the ground. Flames, everywhere. I could hear them screaming inside, and I wanted to run in and help but . . . I was too much of coward to do it because I was afraid of the fire, so they died. They died because of me and my fear.”

 

Sansa looked like she finally understood what had happened, what he had done, and why he had done it. What little bit of fear he thought he had seen in her eyes earlier was gone now, and her hands had moved down to his shoulders, holding him there. Sansa shook her head at him. “That wasn’t your fault,” she whispered to him. She might have been right with that, but it didn’t change how Sandor had felt about the situation at the time that it happened right before his eyes. Had he gone in, he could have saved them, and that would always be the worst part of it all.

 

“That man I killed,” Sandor managed to continue. “That was him. I never saw his face. Not up close. I couldn’t remember it, but we were out drinking and one of the guys, it was him. I thought what a coincidence, right? How often does something like this happen? Well, he started bragging about it like it was something to be proud of, so I followed him home. I wanted him to suffer, so I just broke his bones first. He got a hold of a knife, though. I wrested it from him and stabbed him with it. I didn’t even bother to clean up, and I went home. They caught me the next day.” Sandor was quiet for a moment before he added softly, “And that’s what happened.”

 

“Does no one else know about that?” Sansa asked him, looking horrified of the very possibility.

 

Sandor shook his head. “No, I never told anyone.”

 

“But the courts—”

 

“Murder is murder, Sansa,” Sandor told her, looking her in the eyes. “It doesn’t matter what the other person had done. You don’t just go into someone’s house and stab them in the neck for it. My story wouldn’t have meant shit in court, so I never bothered to tell it.”

 

Sansa seemed to relent to his point if her lack of further argument was anything to go by. Her hands briefly clutched at his shoulders before loosening up, and despite everything he had told her prior to his last story, Sansa slipped down from the bed to sit in his lap. Her arms went around his neck again, and she leaned her head against his shoulder. Sandor wrapped his arms around her body to hold her close, wondering how in the world he had met such a person like Sansa. He wondered at how he could tell her these things about himself, these darker, miserable things, and still she wanted to be around him somehow.

 

Sansa drew in a deep, contented breath. “Thank you for sharing these things with me,” Sansa whispered to him, and she leaned in close to kiss his cheek—on the side that was scarred despite the surgeries and the treatments and the skin grafts to try and make it look normal again.

 

Sandor’s breath hitched in his throat. “Sure,” he said quickly, and one of his hands came up to hold the back of her head, cradling her in his arms, as Sansa laid it against his shoulder once more.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 33\. Russian Roulette – “Russian Roulette” by Rihanna  
> 34\. Another Whole Box of Pandoras – “0% Interest” by Jason Mraz  
> 35\. Rolling Dice and Staying Out ‘Til Three – “Next to Me” by Emeli Sandé  
> 36\. Sunsets in Sweden and the Laws of Eden – “0% Interest” by Jason Mraz  
> 37\. The Cold Mister Mister – “Two Sisters” by Fiction Plane  
> 38\. If You Could Only See – “If You Could Only See” by Tonic  
> 39\. I Have Come to Burn Your Kingdom Down – “Seven Devils” by Florence + the Machine  
> 40\. The Pounding of My Heart – “Supernatural (Deconstructed Mix)” by Kesha  
> 41\. Everyone Learns Faster on Fire – “Burn (Alleged Remix)” by Alkaline Trio  
> 42\. Break a Silver Lining – “A Sorta Fairytale” by Tori Amos


	43. You're Guaranteed to Run This Town

_* * *_

 

After school had gotten out today, Sansa had told her parents that she was going out to the Baskin-Robbins that was about a twenty minute stroll from their house. Her parents had said it was okay, told her to be safe, and then Sansa had ambled her way down the streets alone to walk to the ice cream shop. She wanted to get away from her family for a little while, and Sandor was at work today, so it was a good time for her to be alone with her thoughts. She had gotten there without any trouble along the way. The streets in this part of the city were safe, and so that was the least of her worries. Children were playing outside in sprinklers in their front yards, and Sansa had passed by one house with a trampoline and a party going on for somebody. She had smiled softly at the sight before focusing ahead of herself again to watch where she was going down the sidewalk.

 

Once she had reached the Baskin-Robbins, Sansa went up to the counter, ordered a cone of her favorite flavor, and took it outside to the patio section to eat it. The heat outside was unbearable, but somehow the ice cream in Sansa’s hands helped with staving off the worst of it. The large umbrella set into the center of the table helped, too, as it placed Sansa under a nice cool shade. She should have been sitting inside with the air conditioning, but there were more people inside. Right now, Sansa wanted to avoid the people. After all, she didn’t know any of them, and she was taking time to ponder over her thoughts from the past week, and a random conversation would only interrupt her thinking process. Sansa had discovered a lot of information this past week that she hadn’t previously known about Sandor, and she had been mulling over a lot of it almost every day and night.

 

Though she had crawled into his lap and put her arms around Sandor because she still had feelings for him despite everything he had told her, that didn’t mean the information about his past was easy for Sansa to accept. It was a hard truth, and Sansa was trying to work her way through it in the best way that she knew how. She couldn’t discuss it with Arya, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to talk to Margaery about it just yet, even though Margaery already knew a lot about Sandor’s past and didn’t seem fazed by it in the slightest. Sansa decided that if she talked to anybody about her situation with Sandor, it would be Margaery. There wasn’t anyone else she could share that information about him with who wouldn’t freak out over it except for Margaery. Margaery already knew what kind of person Sandor had been before he met Sansa, and so if anybody would understand what Sansa was going through, it would be her.

 

She thought about everything Sandor had told her almost a week ago, putting together all the images of his past to try and imagine who he used to be before he changed the direction of his life. It was hard for Sansa to imagine him working for some mobster, if that was what he had done, taking care of business like that. She tried to imagine what work like that must have been like, but all she could think of was Hollywood movies where mobsters drove around in cars shooting people up, and somehow Sansa couldn’t imagine that as Sandor. It was almost a comical image in her head, him driving around with a gun in his hands and leaning out of a car window. Sansa snorted at the thought, realizing how ridiculous it looked in her mind’s eye, and shook her head at the idea. She wasn’t sure how underground criminal activities worked, but she was sure it wasn’t out in the open like that.

 

Still, the idea of him killing people was scary. He had never been violent with her, though she had seen him get angry before, and there had been a few moments where she had been afraid of him, but Sandor had never hurt her. It seemed almost a silly question to ask him after what he had revealed to her, but Sansa couldn’t stop the question from spilling from her lips when she had asked him if he would ever hurt her. Sansa had expected his answer, and though she didn’t outwardly question it, a part of her mind debated it. Sandor had killed people, and he had beaten people to a bloody pulp, and he was a struggling alcoholic. However, Sandor hadn’t had a drink since that second time she had shown up in his bar to ask him if he wanted to be friends with her. That was over four months ago, longer than his first record of three months. Sansa knew alcoholics could get violent after a few drinks, but he hadn’t drunken anything the entire time she had known him.

 

Though she debated it, he hadn’t given her a reason to doubt her safety when she was around him, and that was stronger than whatever questions were in her head. Sansa felt safe in his arms. She felt instantly comfortable with him around her, and regardless of whatever he had done in his past, Sandor seemed to genuinely care about her as a person. Sansa knew people couldn’t be just pure black or white. There were measures of grey in everything, and Sandor’s past didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of being gentle or loving or kind. All of those things, she had seen in him thus far. There was no reason why she should question it, even if the idea of his past was a scary one to her. Sansa had never known someone who had killed people before. At least, to her knowledge, she hadn’t ever known anyone like that. It might scare her for a time, but Sansa wondered if one day she would come to accept it. For now, all she could do was wait and see and hope for the best.

 

As she sat there slowly eating her ice cream, a familiar voice called out to her. Sansa turned around her head to look towards the sound, seeing Officer Loras and Mr. Renly Baratheon approaching her from the sidewalk outside of the gate around the ice cream shop’s patio area. Sansa’s eyes went wide at the sight of them, but then she found herself smiling back at them because both of them were smiling at her. Sansa raised her hand to return their waves, and she watched as they came around the gate and entered the patio area. Both of them took a seat at her table, and while Officer Loras was smiling softly, Mr. Renly was grinning wide at her.

 

“How have you _been_ , Sansa?” Renly asked her, folding his arms over the table and leaning forward. “I haven’t seen you in a while!”

 

“I’ve been good,” Sansa told him, lowering her ice cream from her mouth. “Joffrey and I broke up a few months ago. That’s probably why. I don’t come over to his house anymore.”

 

“Good,” Renly said happily. “Joffrey is an asshole. I hate that boy. I don’t know _how_ Robert deals with him.”

 

Sansa grinned at that. “I don’t know either,” she replied, letting out a little laugh. “I don’t know how _I_ did for so long.”

 

“Mmhm,” Renly agreed, “you deserve better than him, that’s for sure.” Renly raised his eyebrows with his admission, and Sansa glanced over at Loras to see him smiling at that as well. “Loras tells me you’re seeing someone new, though,” Renly added, and that brought Sansa’s attention back to him. The smile fell from her face, and her mouth fell open a little bit. “Our old friend, Sandor Clegane?”

 

Sansa was quiet at first, but then she remembered Loras had driven her home that morning after she had spent the night at Sandor’s apartment. Not only that, but Loras had helped cover her butt when it came to her parents. Of course, Renly would know all about that, too. Sansa was surprised Renly had kept that information from his brother and her father, though. She was beginning to realize she had judged a lot of people wrong when it came to her relationship with Sandor. Apparently, more people were supportive of it than unsupportive, and Sansa wondered if that spoke towards Sandor’s better qualities. It made sense, of course. If Sandor was such a bad person, Sansa figured more people would warn her against him. So far, only Uncle Jaime and her father seemed to be against the coupling.

 

It also just hit Sansa that one of the people’s voices she had heard at Maegor’s Holdfast had been Renly’s voice. After all, that was his nightclub and he owned it. He was the one who had been pissed at Sandor for bringing her inside, and instantly, Sansa felt bad for what happened that night. Renly had gotten mad at Sandor for her mistake, and she suddenly wanted to apologize for that. “That was you,” Sansa said, “the night I got drunk at your club. You were yelling at Sandor. I’m so sorry for that. That wasn’t Sandor’s fault. That was mine. I shouldn’t have been drinking, but the man at the counter offered me something and I didn’t think I would drink so much. You have to believe me. Sandor wouldn’t have let me come into your club and drink anything. I know you could’ve gotten in trouble for that—”

 

Renly waved his hand dismissively, cutting her off. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “That’s all in the past. I know it was an accident, and there hasn’t been a repeat of it, so no harm, no foul. Sandor and I are good now, so don’t fret over it.” Renly smiled at her again. “But I have to admit, I’m surprised at the two of you together. I never imagined Sandor as the type of man to settle down with a girl. He was always a bit rocky in the past, wasn’t he, Loras?”

 

“Yeah,” Loras agreed, nodding his head. “He was always a bit rocky, but he was a good man.”

 

Suddenly, it struck Sansa that Loras and Renly obviously knew Sandor back when he lived that other type of life, and she wondered if Loras knew about Sandor’s darker qualities. It seemed strange to her that Loras had joined the police academy, becoming an officer a year ago, after having a friend like Sandor. The two things clashed with each other, she thought, but she didn’t ponder it for too long. Sansa was more curious about Sandor than Loras. “You two knew him back when he was . . . more violent,” she ventured, “but you say he was a good man. Why is that?”

 

Loras and Renly both shared a look at this, a mutual look of surprise, before turning their attention back to Sansa. “Sandor has told you about his past?” Renly asked her, and his voice sounded tighter, on edge to Sansa’s ears. Sansa wrinkled her face in confusion, but she answered his question.

 

“Well, he’s told me some things,” she revealed, “but he hadn’t gone into deep detail or anything like that. I just know . . . he used to not be such a good person as he is now, and Margaery said Loras and Sandor knew each other for years, so I just assumed obviously that you two knew about his past from that.”

 

Renly’s expression seemed to loosen up a little bit with her answer, and he nodded his head at her. Renly glanced over at Loras, and Sansa looked at Loras as well. Loras still had a tight expression on his face as if he hadn’t known Margaery and Sansa had been talking together, which Sansa thought was kind of silly. Loras knew Sansa was friends with Margaery. Of course, the two of them were going to talk.

 

“Naturally, yes,” Renly agreed with Sansa. “We know about some of his past, Sansa. Sandor used to be a bit unstable, but he’s much better now. He doesn’t drink anymore, and I think that has helped him a lot with turning his life around.”

 

Sansa smiled, and she raised her ice cream to her mouth to lick some more of it before it completely melted on her in this heat. Some of it had already gotten onto her hand while they were talking, and it was sticky. “That’s good,” Sansa said in between licks. “I do like him, but I was afraid of a lot of people wouldn’t be okay with it. He is a lot older than me, after all.”

 

“Ah, age is just a number,” Renly said flippantly. “Isn’t that what they say, Loras?”

 

Loras laughed at Renly’s question. “Sometimes, yes.”

 

“Loras and I are six years apart in age,” Renly told Sansa. “How far apart are you and Sandor again?”

 

“Sixteen,” Sansa slowly admitted to him.

 

“Oh, dear,” Renly said, “that is a big gap. Got a decade more on us.”

 

Sansa laughed at this, and so did Loras. “She’s got us beat, Renly,” Loras threw in, grinning at his boyfriend. Renly turned to grin at Loras, too.

 

“Got us beat by a mile,” Renly added, chuckling, and he turned his attention back to Sansa. Renly raised his eyebrows, and then he asked a question Sansa didn’t expect him to ask her. “You are still a virgin, though, right?”

 

Sansa had the decency to look mildly shocked at such a question from Renly, but in this day and age, it really wasn’t that rare for people to ask questions like that anyway. “Of course, I’m still a virgin—” Sansa began, flustered by such an inquiry, but Renly cut her off before she could finish her sentence.

 

“Good, good,” Renly told her, nodding his head at her, but he looked surprised all the same by her admission, and he and Loras shared a look between each other like neither of them had been expecting that answer out of her. Renly turned his head back to Sansa, though. “ _Stay_ that way,” Renly advised her, giving her a pointed look as he raised a single finger to point it at Sansa. “Too many young girls these days just spread their legs all over the place, and you don’t want to be one of those girls, Sansa. Men don’t respect those types of girls, and you’re a sweet young lady, so keep your innocence for as long as you can.”

 

Loras was nodding his head at this like he agreed with Renly. “Yes,” Loras chimed in, “enjoy your youth. Have fun, party the time away—”

 

“But keep your legs _closed_ —” Renly said firmly, and he made a motion with both of his hands, holding them out at his sides and then drawing them together in front of himself.

 

“Yes, keep your legs _closed_ ,” Loras repeated along with Renly. “In fact,” he added happily, “get a chastity belt, if you can, and put it over your lady parts. Lock it up, and put away the key for, what, five years?” Loras turned to Renly, shooting him a questioning look.

 

“Five years?” Renly asked, furrowing his brow. “ _Ten_ years,” he said firmly.

 

“Yeah, ten years. Ten years is good,” Loras agreed, nodding his head.

 

Sansa glanced between the two of them, giving them both skeptical looks. They were advising her not to have sex for _ten_ years, and even to Sansa, that was a very long time to wait. “So,” Sansa ventured carefully, “don’t have sex until I’m twenty- _seven_?” Her eyes had widened in disbelief at this, and she looked from Loras to Renly, gauging their reactions.

 

“Precisely!” Renly announced in his usually happy voice, and he leaned across the table to pinch Sansa on the cheek like she was a seven-year-old all over again. “Ah, that’s my little princess,” Renly told her, grinning at her, and Sansa wrinkled her face and turned away from his pinching fingers, shaking them off of her.

 

“I don’t know,” Loras suddenly said with a measure of skepticism. “Twenty-seven _is_ a long time, Renly.”

 

“Long is good,” Renly told him.

 

Suddenly, the two men shared a funny grin between themselves, pointing their fingers at each other. In unison, they announced, “Eh, that’s what _she_ said!” They sounded like two teenage boys, cracking a joke with each other. Sansa couldn’t help but laugh at this, and she shook her head at them.

 

“Ten years is a long time,” Sansa agreed with Loras, thinking even she wouldn’t wait _that_ long before she was ready for it.

 

“Yeah, and I was fifteen when we first had sex,” Loras said, looking at Renly when he said it.

 

“Oh, right,” Renly said, as if he was suddenly remembering that all over again. “Wait, what’s the legal age?”

 

“Sixteen,” Loras informed him.

 

“Ooh, let’s not repeat that to anyone else,” Renly said.

 

Loras laughed at him. “It was ten years ago,” Loras told him. “No one’s going to care anymore.”

 

“Still,” Renly said, “I don’t want to be a pervert. I was twenty-one, you were fifteen.”

 

“Yeah,” Loras said, laughing. “I was pretty young at the time.”

 

“So,” Sansa cut in, narrowing her eyes, “if the two of you had sex when Loras was so young, why would you advise against me having it at my age?” Not that Sansa was thinking about having it soon, but still, their advice did pose an interesting question. It confused Sansa.

 

“Because you’re a girl,” Renly said, looking back at Sansa, “and things are different for girls than they are for boys.”

 

“Yeah, they’re very different,” Loras agreed.

 

“Boys are expected to lose their virginity young, and they’re expected to be good at sex and all of that,” Renly told her.

 

“—And girls,” Loras cut in, “are judged for being sexually active, sleeping around, and whatnot.”

 

“So,” Renly said, “things will be different for you—”

 

“—Than they were for us,” Loras finished knowingly.

 

Sansa figured this made sense, and from everything that was hammered into her head at a young age, it sounded true enough. She sighed deeply at their admission and looked down at her melting ice cream. Suddenly, she didn’t want anymore of it. She put it aside on the table, letting it melt under the summer sun. “I suppose you’re both right,” she agreed with them.

 

“Of course, we’re right,” Loras said. “We know what we’re talking about.”

 

“Gosh, isn’t she precious, Loras?” Renly asked, and he slid closer to Sansa on the round bench at the table until he was sitting beside her. Renly wrapped an arm around Sansa’s shoulders, and she glanced at him to smile. Sansa didn’t know Renly like she knew Uncle Jaime, but she had seem him a lot when she had been dating Joffrey, too. Renly had always been very sweet and funny, and he was always such a vibrant and wonderful person. Sansa leaned into his embrace. “Can we take her home, Loras?” Renly asked his boyfriend. “I just want to take her home, wrap her up in a pretty pink dress, and put bows in her hair.”

 

Loras gave Renly a hard look across the table, despite Renly’s playful words. “We’re not taking her home, Renly,” Loras said in a rigid voice. Sansa made a silly face at Loras for his serious tone. After all, Renly was just joking around. Sansa knew a joke when she heard one.

 

Renly sighed beside Sansa. “Spoil my fun, why don’t you,” Renly told Loras in a dejected tone, and he turned to look at Sansa, aiming a sad expression at her. “I’m sorry, love. You can’t come home with us. Loras forbids adoption, no matter how many times I tell him I want to have kids.”

 

Sansa laughed at this. “I’m not a kid,” she said, shaking her head.

 

Renly squeezed his arm around Sansa’s shoulders. “You’re an adorable, precious little kid,” Renly said, “ _who_ needs to hold onto her innocence. Sandor can be a persuasive man, but you just tell him ‘no’ for now.”

 

Sansa laughed again. “All right,” she said, though she was just entertaining Renly’s silliness for now.

 

“Oh!” Renly suddenly said. “Guess what? I meant to call Sandor earlier, and I _completely_ forgot.” He pulled his arm away from Sansa to reach into his pocket and pull out his phone, and Sansa glanced down to watch him with a quirked lip of amusement. If she had been looking up, she would have noticed the tight look on Loras’s face, and the way he hardened his eyes at Renly, but she never looked up at Loras during this time, and so she didn’t see the look on his face when Renly mentioned calling Sandor.

 

Renly selected a number in his list of contacts on his phone, and when the phone started ringing, Renly brought it up to his ear. It rang for a while, but eventually, Sandor must have picked up on the other end. Sansa was still grinning somewhat in amusement. Renly and Loras had, after all, managed to assuage a lot of her fears regarding Sandor’s past, especially since they had known him during that time and still managed to have some good things to say about him. It was a bit of a relief for Sansa, really, to hear people that close to Sandor admit good things about him despite all of the bad things in his past.

 

“Sandor!” Renly said in his chipper voice. “How are you, my friend? How are things going at the pub?” Sansa couldn’t hear Sandor’s response, but she imagined what he must have said in response. She watched Renly from the side, smiling all the while. “Wonderful, wonderful!” Renly exclaimed afterwards. “That’s so good to hear. I’m glad things are picking up there. Good business brings good blessings, as they say. Oh! Guess what? Guess who I have here with me? You’ll _never_ believe it,” Renly added, a grin on his face. Sansa’s grin spread wider as she heard the crackle of a low answer on the other end, though no words were understandable to her. Finally, Renly turned to Sansa, and he held the phone close to her ear and mouth. “Go on, say hi!” Renly urged her quietly, smiling at Sansa, the corners of his eyes crinkling with amusement.

 

Sansa looked at Renly, still grinning, and then glanced down as she leaned against the phone. “Hi, Sandor!” she told him, and it was quiet on the other end for a moment. She wondered if he was surprised to hear her voice on the other end.

 

“Sansa?” Sandor asked her quietly, a note of disbelief in his voice, but before Sandor could say anything else to her, Renly brought the phone back to his own ear.

 

“Doesn’t she just have the loveliest voice in the world?” Renly asked Sandor, grinning, and Renly shot a look at Sansa, winking at her. Sansa laughed at him, and Renly looked forward again as he spoke with Sandor on the phone. “She’s a sweet girl, Sandor. Absolutely perfect. You don’t deserve her!” he teased, and then Renly suddenly remembered something. “Oh, we’ve got that thing tonight! Aren’t you coming by after work? It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other, and I’d hate to put off spending some time with my old friend.”

 

There was a response on the other end, and Renly’s expression looked tight for a moment before it relaxed, and he looked happy again. “Wonderful, wonderful,” Renly said at last. “I’ll see you, then!” Renly announced, and then he hung up the phone with Sandor, tucking it back into his pocket. He turned to look back at Sansa, grinning at the while. Renly leaned forward to grasp Sansa in another one-armed hug, squeezing her shoulders tight. “Well, we must be going, Sansa. Loras and I have some stuff to take care of today, but you be good and stay out of trouble,” Renly told her, and he raised a finger to bop her on the nose with it.

 

Sansa shook her head away from his finger, laughing once more. “Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll stay out of trouble.”

 

Renly released Sansa from his embrace, and then Renly and Loras got up from the table. Loras had stuffed his hands into his pockets and was already walking away, but Renly turned around to smile and wave goodbye to her.

 

“Take care, Sansa!” Renly called out, before turning his back to her and leaving with Loras.

 

Sansa grinned and waved back, watching them leave. She was glad she had bumped into the two of them. Their little talk had amused her as well as lightened her spirits, and she couldn’t wait to until she saw Sandor again now. After Sandor’s honesty with Sansa, there were some things she wanted to be honest with him about as well.

 

Picking up her melted ice cream, Sansa went to throw it away before she left the Baskin-Robbins’s patio to head back home with a small smile on her face.

 

 


	44. Dark Enough to See Your Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** Writing this chapter was like climbing the Great Wall of China. I thought, “Damn you, characters, why must you be so _stubborn_. This is supposed to be a _good_ thing. Why are you _fighting_ over it?” I also didn’t expect this chapter to go the way it did at all. I think I told a few of you before how characters get a mind of their own? Sandor overwrote me in this chapter, ruining my original plans for it, and taking it in his direction. That asshole. I could’ve scraped it and re-wrote it my way, and I tried, but this was truer for his character. He had this same reaction during three different write ups, so I finally kept it. Anyway, here’s to unexpected surprises! ;)

_* * *_

 

As the call hung up and Sandor lowered his phone from his ear, he stared down at it in his hand. Even for someone like Renly, this was low. Renly had never pulled something like this before, and suddenly, Sandor realized he hadn’t known Renly for two years and there was no telling what kind of man he had become during that time. Renly wasn’t the same person anymore if this was how he made sure people worked for him, and Sandor’s fingers clutched tightly around the phone in his hand, crushing it in his palm. His anger escalated to a dangerous level for a brief moment until he realized he was more worried than furious, and he immediately left the stockroom to go out into the pub and ask Steffon to cover for him tonight. Sandor was leaving early so he could go check on Sansa. He had to make sure she was all right, and he wasn’t going to function properly until he made sure of that.

 

Steffon agreed to cover him tonight without a single complaint, and Sandor grabbed his jacket and left the pub early. As he was driving straight for Sansa’s house, he picked up his phone and selected her number from his list of contacts. Sandor brought the phone to his ear, watching the streets ahead of him as it rang and rang and rang against his ear. Sandor felt a sudden drop in his heart, but then the phone picked up, and he breathed a heavy sigh of relief at the sound of Sansa’s voice on the other end.

 

“Hey,” Sansa said, sounding amused instead of scared, and then she asked him, “I thought you had work today? What are you doing calling at this hour?” The note of amusement didn’t leave her voice, and despite Sandor’s relief at hearing her voice on the other end of the phone, it didn’t erase the fear in his heart.

 

“I got off early today,” he told her, which was somewhat true. “I was just calling to check on you. To make sure you were all right.”

 

Sansa laughed softly at this. “Of course, I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be all right?”

 

“I don’t know,” Sandor said, trying to sound amused himself, but he only sounded nervous to his own ears. “Just a feeling, I guess.”

 

“Well, I’m fine,” Sansa told him, and she sounded more serious this time. “You’re off work early today?” she then asked, repeating what he said to her not even a few seconds ago.

 

“Yes,” Sandor answered. “Are you home?”

 

“Yeah,” Sansa said.

 

“Can I come by and pick you up?” he asked.

 

Sansa was quiet for a moment like she was surprised by his question, but then she answered him with, “Sure. I’ll let my mother know.”

 

“Okay,” Sandor said, “I’ll see you in a few.”

 

Sandor hung up his phone and drove the rest of the way in silence. The nervous fluttering of his heartbeat grew more erratic with each passing moment, though he had thought with her assurances over the phone that he would feel better. Somehow he didn’t feel better. He felt worse. It got to the point where his fingers were tapping anxiously against the steering wheel as he drove and his chest was hurting from some unseen pressure upon it. When Sandor pulled into the driveway at Sansa’s house, she was already outside waiting for him. Sandor watched as she smiled and made her way towards his vehicle, opening the passenger door and hopping into the seat beside him.

 

The moment she closed the door and turned to face him with that beautiful smile still on her face, Sandor grasped her suddenly with both hands and pulled her towards him to kiss her. Sansa made a little shocked noise in the back of her throat at first, caught off guard by his abrupt move, but she relaxed in his hands and returned it. Her delicate hand reached up to the back of his head, and despite the fact that they were still in her yard and her parents could be looking out either one of the windows in their house to see everything going on inside of his car, Sandor parted his lips against hers and deepened the kiss as he held onto her.

 

When he pulled away from her, his hands still held the sides of her face, but Sandor leaned his forehead against hers and breathed deep. He was going to end up putting her in danger because of his poor life choices in the past. It was all catching up with him, even two years after he had given up that lifestyle. The only way Sandor could see to remedy this situation was to agree to the job Renly had proposed to him. It seemed obvious now that Renly wasn’t going to take no for an answer, especially if he would go so far as to threaten Sansa right in front of her. She didn’t even realize the threat. Sandor heard her laughter on the other end. Sansa thought it was teasing between old friends, nothing more. She trusted Renly. She had no reason not to, but Sandor knew a threat when he heard one. Renly didn’t even try to hide it.

 

“What was that for?” Sansa whispered near his mouth, and Sandor tried to think of how to answer her.

 

“I just wanted to kiss you,” he said, unable to think of anything else to say, and Sandor leaned towards her mouth for another quick kiss. He hoped she wouldn’t question it or think something was behind it, and she didn’t seem to think so once he willed himself to let go of her and pull away. Turning the keys in the ignition, Sandor started the engine and backed out of the driveway. He drove to his apartment with her, thinking one of these days he really needed to take her out somewhere again. They had gotten so comfortable being alone in his apartment, trying to hide their relationship from prying eyes, that things were becoming more and more physical between them. There were moments for them to talk and grow closer, of course, but there were also moments where, had Sansa not been so hesitant with him, they would have gone much further than just kissing and touching.

 

Once they were inside of his apartment, Sandor shut the door and locked it. Locking it made him feel safer in regards to Sansa, like he had brought her here to hide her, even though he knew he couldn’t just keep her here. Her mother would never allow it, and it would break the thin bond of trust Sandor was trying to build with Catelyn. When Sandor turned around to face her, Sansa was staring at the door. Her mouth was hanging open a little bit like she was curious but not quite confused yet, and she raised her eyes to Sandor’s face. She was wondering why he had left work early, why he had kissed her so suddenly, and why he had brought her here. Sansa was slowly piecing something together in her head. Sandor could see the gears turning behind her eyes, so he did the only thing he knew to do to make her stop thinking so damn much.

 

He walked straight up to Sansa, grabbing her for another forceful kiss. This one was just as sudden as the one in the car, but more hurried and urgent, his lips pushing against hers to gain dominance. Sansa was surprised this time as well, but she let him take the lead without trying to stop him, and her hands came up to hold his neck. Sandor walked her backwards almost blindly to the hallway until they reached his bedroom door, and then when he found his way inside, he closed the door behind himself and led her to the bed. He wasn’t using his head. Sandor was using everything but his head.

 

He pushed Sansa onto the bed, crawling on top of her and continuing his assault upon her mouth. His left hand was pressed against the mattress, but his right hand was roaming over her body as he kissed her hungrily. Sansa returned the fervor of his lips against hers, her fingers running through his hair and her back arching underneath him. Sandor’s hand passed over her stomach, and then it slid over to Sansa’s right side to drag upwards along her body. His hand just barely grazed the side of her breast above her shirt, and Sansa moaned at the contact, arching her back once more to press her chest against his. Sandor deepened their kiss, sliding his tongue in her mouth, enjoying the feel of Sansa against him, and then he went further with her than he ever went before.

 

His hand slid down her body between them, and his fingers grasped at the button of her jeans, popping them open easily. Sandor took a hold of her zipper and pulled it down, but Sansa’s hand shot out and suddenly grabbed his wrist, stopping him in his tracks. She broke the kiss by turning away from his mouth, and said, “No, stop—”

 

Sandor’s hand tensed in her grasp, his fingers clutching into a fist. It took him a moment to realize he was so tense not because of her, but because of Renly. Sandor didn’t know how to deal with it aside from finding some sort of release—sex or alcohol. He was slipping back into his old habits already. Sandor squeezed his eyes shut, trying to push away the thoughts. This was not how he wanted his relationship with Sansa to go, not like this. He gently pulled his hand out of her grasp, slid his arm underneath her body, and rolled over on the bed, taking Sansa with him. Sandor was on his back upon the bed now, and Sansa was on top of him. He wrapped both of his arms around her body and just held her close to him, staring up at the ceiling with one hand on her lower back and the other in Sansa’s hair upon her head.

 

“I’m sorry,” Sandor said to the ceiling, not knowing what else to say. She wasn’t going to trust him if he did things like that. He rubbed his hand along her back, but Sansa was completely still and rigid above him. The hand on her back stopped moving, and he clutched both of them against her. “Please, Sansa, I’m sorry,” Sandor repeated, and his voice cracked despite his attempt to keep it firm.

 

Sansa loosened above him, pulling back slightly from his embrace. He let the hand behind her head fall to her back with his other arm, still holding her even as she propped herself up against him. Sansa looked down at him, her auburn hair falling around her face, her mouth half open, and her eyes searching his face for some kind of answer for his actions. Sandor didn’t know how to explain it to her, though. There weren’t going to be any words to help her understand what had been driving his mind just moments ago, nothing that would make it sound like he hadn’t been trying to use her to cure an itch. He didn’t want to have to explain that to Sansa or acknowledge it in any way out loud. She wasn’t going to understand it, not that.

 

“What’s wrong with you?” Sansa asked softly, her eyes flitting back and forth, trying to read his face. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost . . . ”

 

His hands were trembling. When did his hands start trembling? Sandor realized his breathing was ragged as well, and his lips drew tightly together as a pained expression crossed over his face. His hand came up to the side of Sansa’s face above him, and he held her there, trying to make sense of the turbulent thoughts flying through his head all at once. It was a hurricane in there, and Sandor was falling all apart. Every pillar holding him up was falling down around him.

 

“Stay the night with me,” Sandor asked of her, even though he knew of the rules, of Catelyn’s demands, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to give two shits about them right now.

 

Sansa drew in a sudden breath. “You know I can’t—”

 

“You can,” Sandor said. “Fuck the rules. Your mum will get over them.”

 

“Sandor, she’ll be mad—”

 

“She’ll get _over_ it,” he pushed. “Please, please stay with me.”

 

Sansa’s face twisted with confusion, and her eyes gleamed in the dimness of his bedroom. “But why?” Sansa asked softly, trying to understand his reasoning. “Why do you want me to stay the night?”

 

His hand slipped behind her neck, gripping her hard. “So I can hold you,” he told her truthfully, but Sansa only looked even more confused than before.

 

“You can hold me now,” she whispered back to him. “Why do I have to stay the night for you t—”

 

Sandor pulled her down towards him, encircling his arms around her body and tightening them to hold Sansa against him. His hands clutched her harder again, and Sandor didn’t know how long it took for him to realize that he was crying as he lay there upon his bed clutching her. His fingers dug against her, and somewhere amidst it all, Sansa realized he was crying, too. She raised her hands to gently hold Sandor’s face on either side of his jaw, and then Sansa pressed her lips to his cheek to kiss them there. She pressed her lips to the side of his face near his eye next, kissing away a tear streak that led down to his ear. Sansa shushed him like he was some frightened child in her arms.

 

“Shh,” she murmured to Sandor, her hands gliding from his jaw to his neck with gentle touches. “It’s okay,” Sansa said softly. “It’s all right. Shh, it’s okay . . . ”

 

Sandor turned his head towards her, capturing her lips in a kiss. His hand came up to hold the back of her head, and he parted his lips against hers. Sansa slowly allowed her mouth to open, let him slide his tongue past her lips to graze against her own tongue, and she moaned softly. Sandor pulled away from her mouth, though, pressing his forehead to hers. Their noses were pressed together as well, and he breathed through his open mouth.

 

“I love you,” Sandor said suddenly, not knowing where the words were coming from, not even thinking about them. They just came unbidden out of his mouth, like laughter or breathing. His hand left the back of her head to stroke her cheek with his fingers, and Sandor leaned forward again to kiss her once more. “I love you, Sansa,” he said low against her lips, and he moved to kiss her again—but Sansa stopped him, pushing at his chest with both of her hands.

 

He opened his eyes to look at her, and Sansa looked hurt by his words—like she wanted to cry. “Why are you saying that?” she asked him, and Sandor was frozen in place. What had he been saying? Why was she looking at him like that, like he had hurt her again?

 

“What?” Sandor asked her, completely confounded by her question.

 

Sansa blinked as she looked at him, and tears fell down her cheeks at the motion. “If you’re just saying that to get me to _sleep_ with you—”

 

Sandor’s eyes grew wide. “What?” he repeated. “No,” he said, “no, Sansa—”

 

Sansa hit him, though, her hand colliding with his chest. “First, my pants,” she said forcefully, her voice shaking. “Then, you ask me to spend the _night_ with you, and now you’re telling me you _love_ me—”

 

“That’s not what I meant—”

 

Sansa closed her hand into a fist and swung at him again, but Sandor caught her wrist before she could hit him with it. She was the one crying now, and Sandor feared that Sansa was going to get up and leave. He couldn’t deal with the consequences of that, so he did the only thing he knew to do to prevent that from happening. Wrapping his arms around her, Sandor drew Sansa tightly to his chest and held her there. Somehow they wound up both on their sides upon the bed, her body no longer above his. She squirmed, crying, and tried to pull free of his grip, but Sandor held fast. He had bared himself to her unknowingly, and if she got up and just left him over some misunderstanding, he wasn’t going to make it through the night. Sandor would drown himself in a hundred bottles before noontime tomorrow, and be lucky if he even woke up.

 

“Let me _go_ —” she demanded through her tears, but Sandor shook his head.

 

“Please, Sansa, listen to me—”

 

“Let me go,” Sansa pleaded quietly this time, and her squirming in his arms had subsided, so Sandor’s grip loosened on her, but he didn’t let her go.

 

“Not until you listen to me first,” he told her, his voice firm but unsteady.

 

She fell silent now, her body relaxing in his arms, tired of fighting for the moment. Her hands flexed between their bodies, itching to hold onto something but unwilling to hold onto him. Sansa thought he was trying to use her, but it was all a misunderstanding. Sandor wasn’t the type of man who could be scared or intimidated easily, but the veiled threat aimed at Sansa today had shaken his inside to pieces. Maybe he should have been infuriated by it. Perhaps he should have been pushed to seek out some type of vengeance for it, but his first reaction had not been anger.

 

His first, and only, reaction had been _Sansa_ . . .

 

“I could have lost you today,” Sandor said, even though he knew she wasn’t going to understand because he wasn’t going to explain it further than that. “I could have lost you today, and I don’t know how to handle that. I’m sorry I don’t know how to act, but that doesn’t mean . . . that doesn’t make me a liar. Don’t call me a liar. Call me anything but that. Call me a drunk. Call me an asshole. Call me worthless piece of shit, but don’t call me a liar.”

 

Sansa was still quiet in his arms, but he could hear her breathing through her mouth. “You lied to my father . . . ”

 

“Everyone lies from time to time, but I don’t spend my whole life _lying_. There’s a difference.”

 

“What do you mean,” Sansa asked in a whisper, “you could’ve lost me?”

 

“That’s not the important part,” Sandor told her, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t . . . I just couldn’t handle it. If you had left without letting me explain that—”

 

Sandor halted in the middle of what he was saying because Sansa’s hand was on his chest now, pressing lightly against his shirt. Her fingers curled against him, bunching up the fabric, before they spread out again. Slowly, her hand began to move up and down against his chest, and he felt her arm go around him as she pulled herself closer to him. Sandor hadn’t expected that. He hadn’t expected it to be that easy to get through to Sansa, not after the reaction she had where she tried to swing at him, but she was calmer now. She was holding him. She wasn’t trying to run away.

 

“Do you really?” Sansa asked in another whispered breath, and Sandor almost asked her, _Do I really what?_ He knew what she was asking him, though. He had never said it before. Not to her, not to anyone. Sandor had never been the type of man to make an emotional bond with someone, whether it was just a friend or something closer. He had never gotten close enough with people to care that much about them, and that word had never been a part of his vocabulary before. Sandor wasn’t sure why he used that word when he had never used it on anyone else before. He doubted he even knew what it was, or what it even felt like, but somehow that was the word his brain had settled on before the rest of him could catch up with what his mouth was saying out loud.

 

He didn’t know if that was what he really felt, but then again, nothing else seemed to make sense in place of it. He had lain there and cried over her, over the possibility of something happening to her. Something was there, and it was as good a word as any. Maybe even better than most words. It certainly wasn’t a crush, and it wasn’t just lust that he felt for her. Sandor didn’t know what to call it, except for what some dark corner of his mind had already picked out for him without his prior knowledge, and he had just said he wasn’t a liar. If he wasn’t a liar, then was it the truth?

 

Sandor must have been silent for some time because Sansa grew still against him.

 

“Is it true, or were you lying?” Sansa asked him boldly, though she never lifted her face even once to look him in the eyes when she said it. There was a challenge in her tone, a challenge questioning him again, and Sandor felt the sting of it like salt in an open wound.

 

He reached down with his hand, lifting her chin with his fingers beneath it to make Sansa look up at him. She arched her neck with his hand, giving him a steely gaze with her eyes that were usually soft and calm and as blue as the sea. They were darker now, narrowed, facing him with resolve.

 

Sandor wanted to do anything but lie to her.

 

Holding her chin firmly between his fingers, he made sure Sansa looked him directly in the eyes as his gaze bore into hers. Sandor would protect her from anything. It took this to realize it, but he knew it. He would make sure nothing happened to her. Whatever he had to say, whatever he had to do, whatever he had to sacrifice, he would do it for Sansa. He didn’t have to think about it. He didn’t have to debate it. He just knew it.

 

He would keep her safe, no matter the cost.

 

“I would die for you,” Sandor told her in a low whisper, looking her straight in the eyes, “but I would never lie to you.”

 

He searched her face for a reaction, and at first, Sansa seemed to be a statue at his words, but slowly and surely, cracks began to appear in the surface of the smooth marble of her face. Her bottom lip trembled slightly, not much, and her eyes welled up with fresh tears. Sansa blinked, and they came pouring down in silent streaks, falling into her hair upon the bed. She wound her arm around his upper back, touching the back of his head with her hand, and Sandor found himself sliding his hand up her back as he stared back at her. Sansa didn’t seem to need any other words or confirmations.

 

Wordlessly, she leaned into Sandor to place her head just below his chin. Her gentle embrace told him all he needed to know. Her soft fingers curling against the short hairs on the back of his head was enough of an answer. Her steady breathing was calming to him in a way he never expected to feel with a woman. The urge to lose himself in something was gone, but he wondered if it wasn’t because he had already lost himself in her somehow without even knowing it.

 

Sansa breathed in, and then she breathed out, and the crescendo of each breath pulled him in until he could no longer tell where he ended and she began.

 

 


	45. Heavy in Your Arms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** Mentions of past physical and verbal abuse/violence against women in this chapter. Forewarning, in case that is a trigger for anyone.

_* * *_

 

Lying there in Sandor’s arms, Sansa’s fingers played with his hair as her other hand curled and unfurled against his shirt from time to time, stilling on occasion as well. The peaceful silence surrounding them gave Sansa some time to think about everything. She had gotten so upset because she had feelings for him, and suddenly, she had thought all he had wanted of her was sex. As soon as he had gotten it, she had been thinking, he would leave her, too. A highly perpetuated myth, of course, amongst teens, but that didn’t stop the impact of it upon Sansa. Sandor had been acting funny ever since he showed up at her house. Even when he had called her on the phone, something was off about his voice, and then he took her home, kissed her again, and brought her to his bed. Sansa didn’t know what he was thinking when his hand went to her pants, whether he was thinking of taking them off or just slipping his hand inside, but she had stopped him because she had already told him she wasn’t ready for that yet, didn’t want that yet, and still, he was trying to get it.

 

It had immediately put doubts into her head. After he had apologized, asked her to spend the night, and gotten upset, Sansa’s heart went out to him for whatever was making him act this way. Something was bothering Sandor, but Sansa couldn’t understand what it was that bothered him. When he had kissed her, saying those words, trying to close the distance between them, Sansa’s hear froze up—and not in a good way. Sansa didn’t want to believe that this was a game for Sandor, but her first thought was that he couldn’t love her this soon in their relationship. It wasn’t possible. Love took years, didn’t it? If not multiple years, then at the very least one year, but Sansa had never been in love before, and she no true idea of how it was supposed to work, or when you could feel it, or how soon it could happen. All she had were ideas of it, and that wasn’t enough to know the truth.

 

Her second thought had been of her friend, Jeyne Poole, whose first boyfriend had told her he loved her to trick her into intimacy. He broke up with her shortly afterwards, leaving Jeyne a sobbing mess for months. That memory coupled with Sandor’s other actions—his attempt to undo her pants, asking her to stay the night—and then, his sudden announcement of love as he kissed her, turned Sansa’s heart upside down in her chest. She had recalled the convincing way in which Sandor had lied to her father about their relationship, making Ned believe it wasn’t real, and that was enough to make her cry—the thought that Sandor could be lying to her just to get her out of her clothes when she had true feelings for him.

 

Sansa wasn’t a violent person, and she didn’t _hit_ people, but she had been hurt enough over the idea of being played for a fool that she found the strength in her to hit Sandor for it. When she had tried to hit him again, his hand had stopped hers. She had thought he would finally admit to the truth, come clean about what he really expected of her now that they were together, but what Sandor had admitted was nothing of the sort. It was honest, genuine, and real, and very much something he would say. Sansa had challenged him, had brought up his performance to her father if only to see his reaction to it, but Sandor had passed that test, too. At that point, Sansa had run out of ammunition. She had fired off all the rounds in her gun, and her brain was just clicking softly at the emptiness. _Click click click_ went her bare thoughts, turning over no new tests for him.

 

 _I would die for you, but I would never lie to you_ , Sandor had said to her, and Sansa had not expected to hear something like that out of his mouth. It was so intense, so uncomfortable and comforting all at once, and Sansa wasn’t sure how she was supposed to respond to something like that. She had never had a man say that he would die for her before. It was something men only said in the movies when the good guy was about to run right into the fray with a gun or a sword in his hands to protect the woman he loved. It didn’t _happen_ in real life.

 

Sandor had not lied to her so far, though. He had been nonsensically honest about things that most people, had they done those very same things, would not have admitted at _all_ to their new girlfriend. Probably not even to their wives. Sandor had admitted them, though. Sandor had been honest with her, and Sandor had told her the truth, so she was finding it harder and harder to disbelieve him. If he was going to lie about something, he had much better things to lie about than this. Therefore, slowly, as she lay there in his arms, Sansa allowed herself to believe him. It was a dangerous precipice lingering beneath her feet, but she stepped over the edge onto the thin bridge between them to cross over to the other side where he was waiting for her.

 

Sansa couldn’t say she loved him back because she wasn’t going to lie to someone who had been so unbelievably honest with her. While she had feelings for Sandor, Sansa didn’t think of it as love. It put an unseen pressure on her, being told those words and not saying them back, but so far Sandor didn’t seem to care that she hadn’t said them back. When she finally calmed down from everything that had happened between them, Sansa pulled back from Sandor to look up into his face. Sandor just stared back at her, not making another move. Maybe he was afraid to after what he had done. He appeared calmer himself as well, though. The turbulence she had seen behind his eyes and expression earlier had scared her, but it was gone now.

 

His hand reached out to gently tuck her hair behind her ear, his fingers grazing against her ear lobe. He rested his hand on the side of her face, and his thumb stroked her cheek. It was unbelievable to her, Sansa thought, how Sandor could go from such a violent past to this simple delicate gesture with her. Her last boyfriend, Joffrey Baratheon, had no reason at all to be as violent and cruel as he was—no dark past, no former abuse, and no murdered family—and here was Sandor, with all of those things, and yet he was the exact opposite in how he treated Sansa. She wondered at the difference between them, and then she remembered how she had wanted to tell Sandor of her relationship with Joffrey. He would understand her better if she did, and he had been so honest with her. Sansa thought she owed him as much back. She could not tell Sandor that she loved him, and so she settled for the next best thing. She opened up to him as he had opened up to her.

 

“I want to tell you something,” Sansa said quietly, “that I haven’t told you before. I know you saw Joffrey at your pub the night we first met, and you saw a glimpse of what he was like, but that’s all it was—just a glimpse.” Her voice was growing quieter with each word, turning barely into a whisper. She was about to admit things she had never admitted to anyone before, not even her own family, and it was hard to say the words. After so long of swallowing them down, they didn’t want to come back up. They wanted to stick in her throat, and her heart wanted to pound hard in her chest. Sandor had been hurt by his brother, so maybe he would understand—maybe he would believe her. “I want to tell you,” Sansa continued in a whisper, “about my relationship with him and what it was like.”

 

Sandor stared at her across the pillow. His thumb still softly stroked her cheek. “Okay,” he said in a low voice, but he didn’t push her further. Sandor left the decision up to her. Somehow the way he looked at her with that concern in his eyes made the words just pour out of her mouth like a waterfall instead of a slow crack in a dam, and Sansa never thought it would be this easy to say it, but somehow it was easy to share it with Sandor, especially after everything he had told her.

 

“When I first started seeing Joffrey, he was a nice boy, very sweet,” Sansa admitted below her breath, though she didn’t smile at the memory. It didn’t maker her happy, remembering that; it only made her wish she had seen the truth sooner before it had been too late to do anything about it. “He took me out on dates. He bought me gifts. He did all of the things a boyfriend was supposed to do for their girlfriend, I suppose. One time, I was hanging out with him and he invited his friends, Meryn and Boros, to come along. I thought it wasn’t a big deal at first, even though I didn’t want to be surrounded by a bunch of boys. It was okay at first. They were all joking around about something, and Meryn cracked a joke about Joffrey. I don’t even remember what it was about, but I laughed because I thought it was funny. I thought it was okay to laugh.”

 

For the first time since she began talking, her breath hitched in her chest because she knew what was coming next, but Sandor’s thumb kept softly stroking her cheek. Somehow that made it easier to speak.

 

“Before I knew it, Joffrey had slapped me hard across the face, so hard that I fell onto the floor,” Sansa whispered, and Sandor’s thumb finally stilled against her cheek, but she continued talking. “I was still strong then, and I wasn’t going to just let someone hit me and get away with it, so I turned around to get up. I was going to hit him back. I was going to punch him in his stupid face and break up with him . . . but I couldn’t even bring myself to stand. Meryn and Boros were looking down at me, glaring at me, arms crossed . . . like if I tried anything they would help him.” Sansa’s voice cracked, and she felt her eyes welling up with tears. “So I just sat there, holding my face like a scared little girl instead of fighting back, and Joffrey said, ‘Do you think that’s _funny_?’” Her own voice, repeating the words, became acidic. “I wanted to say yes. I wanted to say it was _hilarious_. I wanted to call him a coward for hitting a girl . . . but I was more scared than I was brave, so I said, ‘No . . . ’”

 

Sansa swallowed against the lump in her throat. “When I didn’t fight back that first time, he only got worse. He grabbed me. He pushed me. He slapped me. He left bruises on my arms. He never punched me or kicked me, but he didn’t have to go that far. When I refused to do anything more than kiss him, he didn’t force me, but he slapped me once because of it and he called me an,” Sansa’s voice hitched, but she managed to repeated the words in a softer tone than before, “an uptight bitch. He always said things like no man wanted a prude, or if I didn’t learn how to make a man happy then no one would keep me. I never believed things like that before, but after so many times of hearing it, I started to . . . but it only made me withdraw more. I didn’t want that if that was what it took to keep a man. I decided I didn’t want any of it, but he wouldn’t break up with me and I was too afraid to break up with him . . . ” Sansa took a deep breath, exhaling it slowly. “But then we drove up to your bar, and you stood up to him . . . ”

 

Sandor’s jaw tightened, the muscles flexing beneath his skin. His eyes had darkened with what might have been anger, but Sansa wasn’t sure. “Why didn’t you tell me he did all these things to you?” Sandor asked her, his voice just as low as hers.

 

“It’s . . . I’ve never told anyone,” Sansa tried to explain to him, but she was starting to lose her resolve because of his question. “I was too scared. His father . . . he’s the mayor, and I thought no one would believe me . . . ” Sansa really wanted to stop crying tonight. She was tired of crying by now, but the tears came silently again despite her best efforts to stop them. “I just . . . I would just push it out of my mind and refuse to think about it. I pretended it wasn’t real, even when I knew it was . . . ”

 

Sandor must have realized his question had upset her somehow, so he put his arm back around her body, pulling her to his chest again. He brought his hand to the back of her head and held her in a comforting gesture, and Sansa allowed herself to cry for real—one good cry to get it all out of her system. She let her body be wracked with sobs, and she let Sandor run his hand through her hair. Sansa wept until her eyes ran dry and her chest was hurting from every heaving sob, and then she finally stilled in Sandor’s arms. Her breathing was ragged and deep until it slowed down, and silence surrounded them once more.

 

“Do you believe me?” Sansa asked in a desperate whisper because some part of her feared that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t.

 

Sandor pulled back from her to look her in the face, his features marked with confusion. “Why wouldn’t I?”

 

Sansa’s face twisted in pain. “I don’t know,” she said, her voice breaking again.

 

Sandor closed the space between them once more, his hand dropping to her back. “Of course, I believe you,” Sandor told her, and there was no indecision in the words. Sansa let out a deep breath, and she clutched her hand against his back. “I didn’t know these things, but I wish I had.”

 

“It wouldn’t have changed anything . . . ”

 

“I would have treated you better,” Sandor said firmly.

 

Sansa wondered what he was referring to, and then she remembered the time when he had shoved her against the door to his apartment and how rough he had been that night—and how it had scared her. He probably meant that, Sansa thought. Sandor, while he seemed gentle on the inside to her, was rough around the edges, and he wasn’t always careful with her. Sansa hadn’t wanted to be treated like a doll, though, and a part of her was afraid he would do that now with this newfound knowledge.

 

“Don’t treat me differently, please,” Sansa asked him. “I don’t want you to do that.”

 

Sandor was quiet at first. “Okay,” he finally answered her, and she relaxed further in his arms. “Whatever you want,” Sandor added in a soft voice, like he would grant her anything in the world if she only asked for it, but Sansa didn’t need the world and she wasn’t a greedy person. She felt safe in his arms, though. Even though a part of her wanted to spend the night if just to fall asleep with him because of how comforting it was to her, she knew she couldn’t do that. Her mother had extended an arm of trust to them for a short list of rules, and Sansa didn’t want to break that trust.

 

“I can’t stay the night,” she said to him. “Mum trusts us. I don’t want her to not trust you because of it.”

 

Maybe it was just her imagination, but it felt like Sandor’s hand tensed up on her back for a moment. “No, you’re right,” Sandor admitted despite that. “She won’t trust me if you stay.”

 

Sansa looked up at Sandor, tilting her head backwards. It was a little uncomfortable for her neck, but she wanted to look at him when she asked him this question again. “Why did you want me to stay the night?”

 

“To watch over you,” he said, and Sansa could tell it was the truth, but it didn’t make any sense to her why he felt the need to watch over her for the night. She thought about asking him why, but then she decided against it. Sansa figured it wasn’t all that important, anyway. It seemed like Sandor was going through a lot emotionally, and from everything she had gathered so far, he didn’t know how to deal with it. Amidst her thoughts, though, Sandor asked her a question of his own. “You said his father was the mayor?”

 

“Yes,” Sansa told him, wondering why Sandor wanted to know that bit of information in particular. She gave him a curious look, but otherwise didn’t say anything.

 

“So, he’s a Baratheon?” Sandor asked her next. “Renly is his uncle?”

 

Sansa finally smiled for the first time since they had come to his apartment today. “Yeah, Renly is his uncle. I’ve known Renly for a while. Not as well as I know Uncle Jaime, but Uncle Jaime always came by the house more often than Renly did, though Renly showed up pretty often. I never met Stannis, though . . . ”

 

“Robert’s other brother?”

 

“Right,” Sansa said, grinning. “You know, we know a lot of the same people, and yet I never met you until I walked into your bar.”

 

“Yeah, we do, don’t we?” Sandor asked her, though his voice seemed to trail off.

 

“Mmhmm,” Sansa agreed, and she started to list them out. “Renly, Loras, Jaime, Brienne . . . ”

 

“Yeah,” Sandor repeated himself, and Sansa felt a frown come upon her lips. There was a touch to his tone that seemed far away like he was thinking deeply about something, and she was curious as to what that something was enough to ask him. Sansa stared up at him, and she reached up to touch her finger to the tip of his chin.

 

“What are you thinking?”

 

“Hm?” Sandor asked, raising his brow as he looked down at her.

 

“What are you thinking about?” Sansa asked him. “You look very thoughtful.”

 

Sandor’s gaze turned serious as he stared down at her, and he lowered his face to hers, their noses brushing as Sansa’s eyes came to a close at the sensation. It was little things like this that convinced Sansa of Sandor’s gentleness. Sandor didn’t try to kiss her. He just laid his head close to hers, allowing their noses to brush in a gesture that was both sweet and sensitive. He breathed in and out for a moment, and then she felt his hand cupping her face again. “I’m thinking of a million things at once,” Sandor murmured close to her mouth, and Sansa felt herself part her lips almost instinctively as if waiting for a kiss that never came.

 

Sansa realized her eyes had drifted to a close. She opened them again, closing her lips in succession. “Don’t you think it’s funny how we never met before?”

 

“I do,” Sandor murmured, but he sounded half-asleep. Sansa frowned at him.

 

“Don’t fall asleep,” she complained softly, and she brought her hand to his chest to gently scratch her fingernails up and down against his shirt. “Please,” Sansa pleaded with him. Despite the serious tone of everything that had been said between them earlier, Sansa was slowly starting to feel better about all of it, especially with Sandor’s reaction. He had taken all of it very well. Better, in fact, than how she had taken his news, which made Sansa feel guilty.

 

Sandor’s chest shook with silent laughter. “I’m not falling asleep,” he told her.

 

“Then, why are you so quiet?”

 

“I don’t know,” Sandor said. “You’ve put a lot in my head for me to think about.”

 

“Well, don’t think too much,” Sansa advised him, resting her hand against his chest with still fingers. Suddenly, she remembered what Renly had said over to the phone with Sandor about meeting up tonight after Sandor got off work, and she wondered if Sandor forgot about that. Inviting her to stay the night would have conflicted with that, and it sounded like over the phone he was going to go tonight. “Aren’t you going to meet Renly tonight?” she asked him next, curious to hear Sandor’s answer to that. “When the two of you were on the phone earlier, he said you had a thing tonight.”

 

Sandor opened his eyes to look at her, but he didn’t say anything right away. He just stared at her for some time in silence, and the thoughtful look on his face faltered between being sad or worried as he looked across the pillow at her. Sansa couldn’t make sense of the emotions on his face, and so she frowned at him again. She felt like Sandor was keeping something from her, but she didn’t know what it could be. He had said he could have lost her today, but he wouldn’t say how or why. Sansa was curious enough to ask, but she had already asked and he had already skipped around the question. If he wasn’t ready to tell her, then Sansa supposed she was just going to have to live without the information for a little while longer. Maybe he would tell her when he was ready to say it.

 

“Probably,” Sandor answered her, “but that’s later.” The arm he had around her middle squeezed her lightly. “It’s not now.”

 

“I know,” Sansa told him. “I was just curious.”

 

“We should go out more often,” Sandor suddenly suggested out of the blue, and it was almost like he was trying to change the subject. “Instead of being cooped up in my apartment all of the time.”

 

A small laugh bubbled up in Sansa’s chest as she tilted her head up against to smile at Sandor. “Sure, that’d be fun. I’d like it.”

 

“Good,” Sandor said. “We spend too much time in here.”

 

“Is that a bad thing?”

 

“My hands roam too much.”

 

Sansa pouted at him, half playfully and half serious. “But I like it when your hands roam,” she told him, moving her fingers along his chest again.

 

At her admittance, she felt his hand sliding down her back. His hand stopped on her lower back, and then he curled his inward quickly and made a similar scratching motion as she had moments ago, but it tickled her. Sansa giggled and tried to pull away from it, but Sandor pulled Sansa right back to him and glanced down at her with a falsely hurt expression.

 

“And you just told me you liked it when my hands roamed,” he said to her, and Sansa picked up on the soft teasing tone underneath the surface.

 

“You know what I meant,” she teased right back.

 

Sandor’s expression changed then, and his eyes darkened as their gazes met over the pillow. Gently, he ran his hand upward along her back again, and he leaned forward to kiss her with a soft motion that was unhurried in its pace. Sansa leaned into the kiss, happy that they had come to this understanding when everything could have gone wrong. It was a short kiss, and when Sandor parted from her, Sansa blinked at him with hazy eyes despite their slow approach.

 

“I have to get back home before ten,” she whispered to him.

 

“I know,” Sandor whispered back, and he captured her lips in another kiss to make Sansa forget for now, and forget she did at least until she had to remember again.

 

 


	46. I Hear It’s Such a Long Way Down

_* * *_

 

As always, the club was packed tonight. The parking lot was full, and Sandor was staring at the building through the windshield of his car. He had taken Sansa back home hours ago, and now it was almost nearing three o’clock at night. Despite the blackness of the sky above, Blackfyre Boulevard was lit up with a million lights to give it nearly the same brightness of the daytime hours. Every street light was blazing, and Maegor’s Holdfast was practically its own light show upon the block. The music blared well past the doors of the club into the street beyond it, and the vibration was so strong that Sandor felt it inside of his car. He wondered if Renly was ever going to play something different than this fucking nonsense.

 

Sandor got out of his car, slowly making his way towards the club’s entrance. There wasn’t much of a line outside tonight, but Sandor assumed with the hour that most people were either already inside or well on their way home from too much partying. The bouncer recognized him immediately, let him pass without any questions, and Sandor found himself stepping into the dark alcove of the club’s lobby. For a brief moment, he was surrounded in blackness with the lights flashing in the distance before him. Once he passed out of the dark lobby, the club opened before him into a swell of bodies, blue and white flashing lights, and black lights to add a fluorescent touch to everything within its grasp. There was an eerie glow to it all despite the energetic music, and it reminded Sandor of the blue glow within Renly’s office.

 

His final destination was Renly’s office, and so he pushed his way through the sweating crowd of bodies to make it to the stairwell. Sandor climbed each step carefully, glancing back down at the bodies below. None of them seemed to be aware of the type of business that went on right above their heads, ignorant to the charm and wiles of their club owner and party starter, Renly Baratheon. Renly was a popular figure in the city for his position at the top of the nightlife attractions, but he also got a lot of upstarts in the music business noticed as well and rubbed shoulders with a lot of famous people. It helped, of course, to be popular in his other line of work. Renly knew all of the right people, if not all of the people period, and he had spun a dangerous web of intricacies into the city of Kingsland with each one of his fingers.

 

At the top of the metal stairwell, Sandor made a right and walked down the dark halls and corridors of the second floor. Along the way, he encountered a couple of guards and security, but each one of them knew him and had known him for years, so they all nodded their heads at Sandor and allowed him to pass by without stopping him. Sandor was also sure Renly had told all of them that he was expecting Sandor tonight and to let him pass. The security at Renly’s club was better security than the Prime Minister’s own personal entourage. No one got through without Renly knowing about it, and anybody he wanted kept out never even made it close to one of the club’s entrances or exits.

 

Sandor approached the door to Renly’s office at last. On either side of the door was a huge man dressed all in black with their hands folded in front of them. They both looked at Sandor. One of them was the same height as him, but the other one was at least two inches taller. Sandor glanced between both of them. When they remained silent and made no move to let him pass, Sandor spoke up.

 

“I’m here to see Renly,” Sandor told them with a note of irritation to his voice. “He’s expecting me tonight. Sandor Clegane,” he added, giving them his name.

 

The two men shared a look between themselves before looking at Sandor again. One of them stepped forward, eyeing Sandor with a narrowed gaze. “I’ll have to search you,” the man said, and despite the aggravation he felt, Sandor lifted his arms and allowed him to do his job. When the man was satisfied that Sandor wasn’t concealing a weapon, he turned and nodded at the second man. The second man opened the door, and Sandor quickly passed through it. The door closed behind him, and Sandor found that Renly wasn’t alone in his office.

 

A dark-haired man in a business suit was sitting in one of the chairs in front of Renly’s desk, holding a cigar near his mouth. At the sound of the door opening, the man had curiously turned his head to gaze at Sandor. Sandor recognized the man. He had never worked with him before, but he knew of him. He knew his reputation. He knew of his work. The man was Oberyn Martell, a dangerous desperado with a penchant for violence and poison. Off to the back of the room, Sandor noticed four other figures. All of them were women, none of them familiar to him, but he had recalled hearing stories of Oberyn and his Sand Snakes. If there were four of them, they must have been his daughters. Sandor eyed them for a brief moment, and despite the attractiveness of one or two of them, Sandor didn’t care to let his gaze linger. He turned his head back to the desk towards Renly and Oberyn, approaching the chair off to Oberyn’s left and sitting down in it.

 

Renly let a slow grin spread across his face at Sandor’s approach and subsequent choice to take a seat without being asked to do so. “Sandor, my friend,” he began, holding out his arms as if he meant to hug Sandor, if only they had been closer and there wasn’t a desk between them. “It’s so good to see you here at last. I was hoping you could make it tonight. I trust everything is good now?”

 

“Yeah,” Sandor said easily, finding it simple to lie to him. The word just flowed off of his tongue like an admittance of relief, even though Sandor felt anything but relieved given the threat that had brought him here tonight. “Everything is good,” Sandor went on to say so convincingly that Renly’s theatrical grin became a genuine smile with that news.

 

“Wonderful,” Renly told him, clapping his hands together all of a sudden. “Well, let’s get down to business, shall we?”

 

“First things first,” Sandor cut in, “before you expect me to agree to this, what is your plan for what comes after? What happens once Jaime Lannister falls? All of his cases will be re-opened, dissected, and re-tried. All of those criminals he put away, they’ll get back out on the streets, even if it’s just temporary. What, then? What cleans up that mess?”

 

Before Renly could answer him, another voice spoke from the back of the room. “We do,” one of the women said, and she walked forward to stand close to the desk within Sandor’s line of sight. She was a tall woman, or maybe it was just the four inch heels on her feet that looked sharp enough to be used as a weapon. Crossing her arms over her chest, she regarded Sandor with a sharp gaze. Her shiny hair was long and black, half pulled up onto her head and half falling down in a tousled look. Her clothes matched something a twenty-three year old club goer might wear—a leopard print v-neck blouse and a long black skirt with a diagonal slash to make one side shorter than the other. She was beautiful, but she looked like a fucking idiot with that outfit.

 

“Oh, what are you going to do?” Sandor asked her, completely fucking with her. “Stab them with your shoe?”

 

Oberyn Martell began laughing beside him. “I like this guy,” Oberyn said with his distinctive accent, jutting his thumb out at Sandor. He glanced over at Sandor with a twinkle in his eyes. “Though I doubt my daughter, Nymeria, appreciates the mockery.”

 

“It’s a valid question,” Sandor said simply, returning his gaze back to Nymeria. Her glare was forceful enough to burn right through him had he given two shits about what she thought of him, which he didn’t.

 

At that point, another one of Oberyn’s daughters had walked up to stand beside Nymeria. This one wasn’t as pretty, not by a long shot, but she was large and strong and built with nearly as much muscle as Sandor. “Nymeria and I will clean up the mess with our father’s help,” the second daughter said, though she didn’t seem as offended as Nymeria had been with Sandor’s comment about the high heels. Probably because this one wasn’t wearing any. She was dressed more sensibly in regular clothing and flat shoes, and she looked more capable of cleaning up that sort of mess than the sister standing beside her.

 

Sandor turned his head back to Renly, who was still sitting in his chair beside his desk. “I will help get the information,” Sandor said, “but I won’t kill anyone, so don’t ask me to. That’s my one rule if you want my agreement.”

 

“Agreed,” Renly said without hesitation, and he smiled again at Sandor. “You will be working with Sarella and Tyene to acquire the information. The one on Jaime’s niece and nephews is locked up at the hospital, but that will be easy to get. The other information will be the tricky part, and you may have to sit out for that one as your face is very well known at the precinct. Sarella and Tyene, however, should be able to handle that one on their own without your help. Of course, all hands are needed for that one to make sure they get in and out safely without any hiccups. Should push come to shove, you, Obara, or Nymeria will have to step in add a little push yourselves.”

 

 _Violence_ , Renly meant to say. If things didn’t go according to plan and something was botched, he expected the three of them to deliver some punches to help pave the way. Sandor just said he wasn’t going to kill anyone, and yet here was Renly implying it could very well be possible that he might be thrown into a situation like that. If things went wrong at the precinct, all of those coppers had guns—and lots of them.

 

“I shouldn’t be near the precinct at all,” Sandor said in a firm voice, meeting Renly’s gaze across the desk. “As you said, they know my face. I get caught, that’s on you.”

 

Renly lifted his chin somewhat, narrowing his eyes as he seemed to ponder over this information. “Fine,” Renly said at last, slowly grinning again. “I’m sure Obara and Nymeria can handle that guard job by themselves.”

 

“Yes,” Nymeria said tartly, “we can.”

 

Sandor lifted his hands from the armrest. “We have a deal,” he said simply, raising his eyebrows. It was easier for Sandor to agree to the job as long as Renly had a plan to clean up the aftermath, but that still didn’t mean he wanted to do this. Sandor didn’t have much of a choice anymore, though. He wasn’t going to risk something happening to Sansa and her getting hurt because of him not knowing what Renly was capable of anymore, so instead of taking the risk with turning Renly down, Sandor chose to say yes. He didn’t do it for himself. He was doing it for Sansa. Sandor didn’t tell her about the job, or about Renly’s threat, because he would be bringing her into for real if he did that.

 

Not only that, but if Sansa knew about the job, she would tell Sandor not to take it. In her naiveté she would think that they could find a way around it, and Sandor would follow her wishes in an attempt to make her happy. Doing that could put Sansa in danger, though, which was the very thing he was trying to avoid for her. Besides, Sansa looked at Jaime Lannister like an uncle for some reason, even though the prick wasn’t her real uncle, and she wasn’t going to agree to let Sandor do something to the man that would hurt him, his career, and his life. Sansa wasn’t going to understand Sandor’s reasoning for any of it. Sandor had told her he would never lie to her, and he wasn’t lying. He was keeping secrets, though, and he felt the first itch of it starting to bother him already.

 

There was something else as well. After what Sansa had told him about that piece of shit, Joffrey Baratheon, Sandor was looking forward to ruining that prick’s life. He had raised his hands against Sansa on more than one occasion, and Sandor wondered how much he was going to love his privileged life once it came out that his uncle, who was sibling to his mother, was really his father. Life wasn’t going to be so easy anymore with that information out and about in the streets, plastered over every newspaper and magazine, and floating through the halls of his high school. Some part of Sandor wanted the job if only to ruin Joffrey’s life without actually beating the boy to a bloody pulp for what he did to Sansa.

 

Oberyn rose from his seat to smile at Renly and Sandor. First, he reached across the desk to shake Renly’s hand, and then he turned to Sandor and extended his hand to him. Sandor rose from his chair as well, clasping the other man’s hand for a firm shake. Oberyn’s eyes were glassy and black, and Sandor couldn’t read them beyond their coloring. Oberyn was not necessarily a man of many secrets, especially given how most of his personal life was very well-known to many people, but when it came to his thoughts, those were the true unseen danger.

 

“I take it we are all in agreement now, and the crew is together?” Oberyn asked no one in particular as he glanced between Sandor and Renly.

 

Renly responded to him. “Yes,” he said, “this was just a cursory meeting to establish the beginning of a business partnership. The true details of the plan we will go over later as I begin to prepare everything. After all, we’ve got a lot of things to prepare for, and only so much time in which to prep.”

 

The other two women, who had been hiding in the shadows, came forward during this talk. One of them, a shorter lady with dark skin and short cropped hair, was looking up at Sandor skeptically. She extended her hand to him, though. “Sarella,” she said, greeting him with her name. “I heard you and I will be working together, so I thought I should introduce myself.”

 

Sandor accepted her hand, shaking it with a good measure of strength, as Renly and Oberyn carried on a conversation in the background. “Nice to meet you, Sarella,” Sandor told her. She didn’t seem as smug as the others, which was a good thing. Sandor hated working with people who were full of themselves. Sarella had a laidback quality to her. The two of them should get along just fine. However, another figure appeared next to Sarella, a youthful looking blonde woman with large blue eyes that reminded him of Sansa’s eyes. Sandor pushed that thought from his head, not liking how another woman reminded him of Sansa.

 

The blonde woman extended her hand to him as well. “I’m Tyene,” she said in a soft baby voice, and it took Sandor all of three seconds to see through her act. There were women who liked to use their feminine wiles on men to get them to do what they wanted them to do, and Sandor could tell Tyene was one of those types of girls. For starters, Sandor hated fake people. Usually, he was good at spotting them, too. Everything about Tyene screamed of it. Her fake innocence was almost nauseating, and he wasn’t sure that he even wanted to shake her hand, but for business purposes he did it. Tyene’s grip wasn’t even a grip. She mostly just let Sandor hold her hand for a moment before the awkwardness made him pull away.

 

Sandor gave her a curt nod instead of a greeting. They all knew his name with Renly’s grand introduction, anyway, so it wasn’t necessary to keep repeating it all night. He just barely listened as Tyene said something to him, turning his focus instead mostly on Oberyn and Renly. As soon as the two men were finished with their conversation, Oberyn took his leave of them and, meeting Sandor’s gaze once more for a smile, made his way towards the door. His daughters followed behind him, exiting the room at last. Sandor waited until he heard the door shut behind them before he raised his gaze to Renly.

 

Renly was all smiles and twinkling eyes as he looked back at Sandor, but Sandor had something to say to him before he left and Renly wasn’t going to like it. During his conversation with Oberyn, Renly had gotten up from his chair and made his way around the desk to speak with the other man, so Sandor only had to cross a short distance to reach him. He did something then that Renly wasn’t expecting.

 

Grabbing the back of Renly’s neck, Sandor pulled the other man closer to him and bent down near his ear. Renly tensed in Sandor’s grip—a smart man, but a small man, and not a weapon on his person or in sight. He might have had one in his desk, Sandor thought, but Renly wasn’t behind his desk to grab it for protection. Sandor was also twice his size, and sure, he wouldn’t get out of here alive if he harmed Renly, but they were alone in this room for the moment. They were alone, and Sandor had something very important to say to the man.

 

“If you ever threaten Sansa again,” Sandor said softly, though his voice was sharp and laced with a discomforting promise of danger should his words not be heeded, “no amount of money, or bodyguards, or fancy oak doors will keep me from getting to you.”

 

Perhaps it was a stupid thing to threaten his own boss, not to mention someone with as many webs and connections as Renly had around the city, but Sandor wasn’t going to let Renly’s threat go without a response. If Renly thought he could push Sandor around without consequences, then he was very much mistaken. There was always a consequence, especially when it came to someone like Sandor Clegane. Renly ought to have known that. For as long as he had known Sandor, he ought to have known that about him.

 

Sandor pulled back from Renly, but he didn’t immediately let go of the other man’s neck. First, Sandor gave him a tight-lipped smile, which Renly didn’t even bother to try and return, and then he clapped Renly on the shoulder. “I’m glad we had this discussion,” Sandor told him, mocking the other man’s silence. His hand dropped from Renly’s shoulder, and he made his way towards the door of the office without even bothering to look back.

 

Some part of him expected some sort of witty comeback from Renly, but Sandor didn’t hear a word as he opened the door and exited the room, shutting it behind himself. The two guards were still standing outside on either side of the door, though they paid Sandor no mind as he walked down the hallway back the way he came on his original path up here. The hallways were empty, save for a few security guards. Sandor made his way to the stairwell that led downstairs back into the swarm of bodies below.

 

Renly had been completely silent, which wasn’t like Renly. The man was a chatterbox. Sometimes he loved to talk just to hear the sound of his own voice, but he had said nothing to Sandor’s promise. Either Sandor had somehow managed to stun Renly into silence, or for once in life, Renly was actually afraid of Sandor. Renly had never been afraid of him before. Never had a reason to, in all honesty. They had gotten along quite well in the past, and they used to have a good relationship. It had mostly been a business relationship, but there had been times outside of it that might have counted towards a sort of friendship between the two of them. All of that was gone now, and as far as Sandor was concerned, there was no chance of recovering it. Not after that stunt. Not a chance in hell.

 

Passing through the swarm of bodies was easier this time because there were fewer people in the club now. As the hour drew even later, people were getting tired and going home or leaving early for a fuck after all their dancing. Sandor made it to the dark lobby, and then out into the cool night air beyond the front entrance. When he glanced down the sidewalk, he was surprised at what he saw a few cars down from him. Oberyn Martell was still here, though his daughters were nowhere in sight. Sandor thought the man would have been long gone by now, but there he was, lounging against the side of dark red vehicle and smoking that same damn cigar from earlier.

 

Oberyn spotted him and pushed himself off of his vehicle, putting out his cigar. It was down to a small nub by now, not worth hanging onto any longer. Sandor watched as Oberyn threw it aside onto the sidewalk, stepping on it for good measure. Slowly, and with a noticeable degree of deliberation, Oberyn made his way over to Sandor in just a few long strides. He smiled casually at Sandor once he reached him, tilting his head towards him in another greeting.

 

“You are _the_ Sandor Clegane I have been hearing so much about, correct?” Oberyn asked him, giving him a pointed look. It was not too serious, but there was a clear manifestation of curiosity in the other man’s usually unreadable black eyes.

 

“The one and only,” Sandor said, silently questioning where Oberyn had heard so much about him from, and then it hit him fairly quick. Obviously, from Renly. Sandor wondered what Renly had told Oberyn, and whatever it was, he hoped it was good.

 

“Your brother,” Oberyn said then, and Sandor felt every muscle in his body freeze at the mention of his brother from this man, “he is in prison, yes?”

 

“Yes,” Sandor replied slowly. “Where he belongs.”

 

“I disagree,” Oberyn said, raising his eyes to Sandor’s gaze. They gleamed with a cold hatred strong enough to chill Sandor to the bone. “He belongs six feet underground, but the justice system in this country . . . ” Oberyn steadily shook his head, tutting three times. “It is lacking,” he added, giving Sandor another look.

 

Sandor agreed with the man, of course. His response had been his mandatory one for whenever someone brought up his brother, but Gregor deserved to be six feet underground. Preferably, in more than one place. He definitely didn’t deserve to be sitting pretty in a prison cell, using up innocent people’s tax money to keep his worthless life going on. Sandor _hated_ his brother. Hate might not have even been a strong enough word to cover what Sandor felt towards Gregor. Sandor had wished him dead so many times, and sometimes he had even thought about killing Gregor himself, but he had never actually done it. Whether it was a lack of opportunity or a lack of willpower, Sandor never knew. It would have been so easy in the past to have just picked up a gun and popped one off into Gregor’s skull, but for some reason, Sandor had never done it. Gregor was in maximum security prison now, and if everything went according to Renly’s plan, he might very well get out of it.

 

“I wish to make up for that,” Oberyn told him, his voice growing quiet. His eyes darkened with his intent, and Sandor knew what was driving this man to be a part of Renly’s plot. He wanted Gregor released from prison so he could kill the man himself, ending Gregor’s life once and for all. Sandor tried to remember the details of the case. He remembered the name Martell, but he couldn’t remember the relation.

 

“Elia Martell,” Sandor said, returning his drifting gaze back to Oberyn, and Oberyn’s face hardened into stone.

 

“My sister,” Oberyn hissed, though not from mentioning her, but from what her murderer had done to her. “He killed her daughter. Stabbed her to death fifty times, it looked like. Right in front of her. Then, he grabbed her babe out of her arms and dashed his head against the wall. He raped my sister, Elia, while bits of her baby’s skull and brain still clung to his fingers, and then he murdered her as he had murdered her children. I will make him suffer as he made Elia, Rhaenys, and Aegon suffer, and I will make him say their names before he dies.”

 

Sandor narrowed his eyes at Oberyn. He didn’t like how the man seemed to be implying that Sandor would have something against this. Oberyn looked like he expected Sandor to lose his cool, and the way he spoke of it to Sandor was as if he expected Sandor to _defend_ his fucking brother for what he had done to Oberyn’s sister and her children. Sandor took one step forward, facing Oberyn fully.

 

“What?” Sandor asked him, and he couldn’t keep the sour tone from his voice. “You want my approval? I don’t give a fuck what you do. Cut off his head and stick it up on your gate, for all I care.” Sandor took one more step forward, lowering his voice. “But don’t talk to me like I’m my _brother_ ,” he spat.

 

There was a silence between them as Oberyn regarded Sandor carefully. After some time, the look of hatred died off from Oberyn’s face to be replaced with his casual smile once more, and then he grinned suddenly. Reaching out, he clapped Sandor on the shoulder.

 

“We will be good friends,” Oberyn told him, gripping Sandor’s shoulder tightly. “Good friends,” he repeated once more, and then he let go of Sandor, stepping back from him. Oberyn offered another flash of a smile before he turned around and headed back to his vehicle. Sandor watched as Oberyn opened the door and slipped inside of his car, shutting it behind himself. The car cranked, the lights came on, and Oberyn flew out of the parking lot like a speed demon on a race track. Sandor could hear his car all the way down the street, long after he couldn’t even see it anymore.

 

He was ready to go home, and so he got into his own vehicle and drove back to his apartment. It was dark and quiet, and he only turned on one light. Sandor shut the door behind himself, locked it, and fished through his pockets to remove his belongings and put them on top of the kitchen counter as usual. Once he had finished with that, he made his way to his bedroom to change into something to sleep in for the night. It was hot, and though he had the air conditioner running, Sandor chose to just wear a pair of boxers tonight. He set the alarm on his phone and put it on the nightstand by his bed.

 

His eyes were closed, and he was well on his way to sleep when his phone began to buzz on the nightstand. Sandor slowly opened his eyes and stared at it. Normally, he would glare at his phone if it rang at this hour, but this time, he just pushed himself up onto his elbow and grabbed for his phone. Sandor checked the name and number before answering it, seeing Sansa’s name there on the screen. He answered the call with a swipe of his finger, and brought the phone to his ear.

 

“Hey,” he said softly, especially since he already knew it was her.

 

It was quiet on the other end for a moment. “You checked the screen, didn’t you?” Sansa then asked him in a whisper, and Sandor could hear the smile on her face, even though he couldn’t see it.

 

“Yes,” he admitted, feeling the corner of his mouth twitch, though it didn’t quite reach a smile. “I did.”

 

“Well, I thought,” she began in a hesitant voice, “with me not being able to stay over the night that maybe I could call you and we could stay on the phone together like we did that other time . . . and maybe it’s not the same, but you could still watch over me. You just wouldn’t be able to see me, but you could hear me, if that counts . . . ”

 

Sandor ran his free hand over his face. His eyes stung, but he pushed back the feeling, taking a deep breath to calm himself. He was not going to cry over this. He was _not_ going to fucking cry. He took another deep breath, which seemed to calm him some more, and removed his hand from his mouth.

 

“Sure,” he said in an unsteady voice. “Sure, that counts.”

 

“Okay,” Sansa whispered happily, and yet again, he heard the smile in her voice.

 

Sandor laid himself back down on his bed, and he hit the button on his cell to put it on speakerphone. Turning onto the left side of his face, he placed the phone across from his head on the pillow and closed his eyes again. He heard Sansa shifting around into a comfortable position, more than likely placing her phone on speaker as well, before it settled into silence on her end—except for the steady sound of her breathing through the phone line.

 

He breathed slow, allowing his lungs to fall into tune with hers, until the sound of Sansa’s breath lulled him to sleep.

 

 


	47. You Win Some and You Lose Some

_* * *_

 

When Loras got home from work, he expected to find Renly asleep in bed. The penthouse was quiet, save for the steady hum of the cool air passing through the vents from the central air system. Loras found their bed empty, though. He looked out at the balcony in their master bedroom, but the door was closed and Renly wasn’t outside. The soft light of a new sunrise was creeping over the horizon as dawn was breaking, and Loras turned back to face the room. He glanced around in confusion, wondering where Renly might be. It took Loras a moment to realize there was light pouring out of the bathroom from underneath the door. With a small smile on his face, Loras walked over to the bathroom door and opened it. He peeked around the corner, figuring he ought to at least make himself known so he didn’t startle Renly.

 

“Are you in here, babe?” Loras called out, and there was a soft splash to answer him. Loras smirked at Renly’s version of an answer. Leaving the bathroom door open, he moved to sit down beside the tub and rapped his knuckles against the shower door.

 

“You can open the door,” Renly said from the other side, and so Loras slid the door open. Renly was lounging in the water, laying more than sitting, and the water came up to his collarbone. Loras took one look at Renly’s skin, and then he immediately wondered just how long Renly had been soaking in the tub. His skin had turned white and shriveled up.

 

“You’re a prune,” Loras said, looking back at Renly’s face in disbelief. “How long have you been in here?”

 

“An hour or two,” Renly told him slowly. “I think,” he then added, as if he wasn’t quite sure about his original answer.

 

“And you wanted to become a wrinkly old man sooner rather than later because . . . ?” Loras drawled out the end of his question, raising his eyebrows as he waited on an answer from Renly.

 

Renly hadn’t been looking at Loras, but now he lifted his gaze to meet his eyes. Loras was taken aback by the expression he saw there in Renly’s eyes. They were tired, it seemed, and their bright glow was dimmed to a dull shine. The lines on Renly’s face were more defined and noticeable, and the exhaustion Renly felt under the surface marked every feature with more age. He looked, if Loras thought about it, like he was dead to the world as he lounged there in the tub. Something had happened to Renly to make him look this way, and suddenly, Loras was extremely worried for him.

 

Loras reached out his hand, sliding it over the side of the tub to seek out Renly’s hand in the water. Once he found his familiar fingers, which felt oddly dry underwater and wrinkled to the touch, he wrapped their hands together and folded his fingers over the back of Renly’s hand to grip him tight. Whatever it was, Loras was sure he could get it out of Renly with some careful nudging. It pained him to see Renly so quiet like this, which was so unlike him.

 

It took Loras a moment to realize he hadn’t rolled up his sleeve, and now his shirt was soaking in the water from the tub. _Oh, well_ , he thought. It wasn’t such a big deal when it came down to it. Loras was going to be changing his clothes soon, anyway. That was the least of his worries. Right now, Loras was far more concerned about Renly and what had brought this deathly silence over him.

 

“Is everything all right?” Loras probed with a gentle voice, and he tilted his head to the side as he searched Renly’s face for a reaction. Renly’s eyes had already drifted away from Loras’s gaze again, and he was staring forward at the tiles of the wall near his feet in the tub as if he meant to count them all before he was going to leave the water.

 

“No,” Renly said honestly, and his voice sounded a thousand miles away as he stared forward at the tiles. “Everything is not all right.”

 

“What happened?” Loras asked him, urging forward with a careful trepidation.

 

Renly took a deep breath, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the curve of the tub’s edge where it met the wall. He exhaled the heavy breath through his mouth and reopened his eyes, staring upward at the ceiling above his head this time. “Sandor thought I meant to actually hurt Sansa,” he admitted as quietly as possible, and then his eyes creased at the corners as a look of disbelief passed over his face. “I mean, I’m a good actor, but I never thought he’d actually believe it to that extent.”

 

Loras was not surprised like Renly was surprised at Sandor’s reaction. If anything, it was something that Loras expected to happen after that ill-chosen phone call on Renly’s behalf. Loras and Renly had talked about everything beforehand, and Renly had promised Loras that there would be no surprises. He had said that he was just going to talk to Sansa and that was it. It was why Loras had been so angry when Renly pretended as if he had forgotten to call Sandor and picked his phone out of his pocket to dial Sandor’s number. Loras had known it wasn’t going to end well, whatever Renly said to Sandor over that line. He had wanted to snatch Renly’s phone out of his hands, but he didn’t want to alarm Sansa, so Loras had kept his hands to himself despite the tight look on his face that spoke otherwise of his happiness regarding the situation. Luckily, Sansa had never looked over at Loras to see the look upon his face.

 

“What did Sandor say?” Loras asked him, hoping Sandor hadn’t done anything rash. Though, Loras supposed, if Sandor had done something rash, then Renly probably wouldn’t have been here lounging in the tub like a sullen child. Loras pushed that thought from his head, not wanting to think about the possibility of Sandor hurting Renly.

 

“He said if I ever threatened Sansa again, he would come after me,” Renly told Loras, finally turning his head to look back at him. Renly snorted all of a sudden. “It’s preposterous, of course, with my entourage and security, but still. The fact that he thought I would _actually_ hurt her . . . ”

 

Loras raised his eyebrows. “Wasn’t that your whole intention of calling him in the _first_ place?” Loras pointed out, and he was unable to keep the incredulity out of his voice when he brought up his question.

 

Renly sighed deeply, causing waves to ripple through the bath water. “My intention was to scare him, yes—”

 

“So,” Loras said, cutting him off, “your intention was to scare Sandor into thinking you would hurt Sansa, and now that he believes you, you’re _upset_ about it? Did I get that right, Renly? Just let me know because I’m not sure what you’re aiming for here, if that wasn’t how you had _hoped_ things would go.”

 

Renly turned his head to glare at Loras. “You quit being a smartass, Loras—”

 

“Well, it’s better than being a dumbass,” Loras shot back, though he wasn’t angry when he said it. He was simply stating it like it was, and if Renly didn’t like it, then he needed a good wake up call. Loras had known from the beginning that pushing Sandor would have been a bad idea, but Renly hadn’t wanted to listen to Loras, and now Sandor probably wasn’t going to trust either one of them after the stunt that Renly had pulled at the ice cream shop with Sansa.

 

It was one thing to talk to her to see just how in deep Sandor was with her and to see if Sandor’s hesitance with the job had anything to do with his new life involving Sansa, and it was even okay to mess with the girl’s head regarding her relationship with the guy, but it had _not_ been okay to call Sandor and aim a veiled threat at the girl with her right there by Renly’s side. Loras had known that was going to blow up in Renly’s face one way or another. Sandor wasn’t going to take something like that lying down, not if he gave two shits about the girl at all. Judging by how things had gone after that phone call, Sandor was in deep with Sansa. Clearly, he cared about the girl, and he cared about her a lot.

 

According to Sansa, Sandor hadn’t even slept with her yet, but he had threatened Renly over her safety despite that. Whatever Sandor felt for Sansa, she was more than just a play toy to him and more than just a physical relief after a long day at work. Renly had judged their entire relationship wrong. Maybe he had thought Sandor just liked the girl and that was it, and he would agree to the job just to make sure his ‘play toy’ was still available to him after things were said and done, but Sandor had taken Renly’s threat very personally. Loras wasn’t sure how they were going to smooth over this situation, but maybe he could do something to remedy it. Even if he couldn’t fix the broken trust between Sandor and Renly, he could at least make sure things didn’t escalate any further than they already had so far.

 

“Are you calling me a dumbass?” Renly asked him slowly after a long moment of silence between them, staring across the tub at Loras like he couldn’t believe what he had just heard out of Loras’s mouth.

 

“Yes,” Loras admitted with a quick nod of his head. “I’m calling you a dumbass.” Loras aimed a small smile at Renly, trying to keep things light despite the subject matter they were discussing because he didn’t want another fight with Renly. After their last big row, Loras was trying his hardest to avoid another one, though on more than one occasion since then Renly had pushed Loras’s buttons to the max. Loras had managed to compose himself each time and push it aside, dealing with it at a later time in a much calmer manner.

 

Renly looked like he was going to say something to that. Finally, it seemed as though he was going to get angry, which in a way, was good for him. The dead look in Renly’s eyes was hard for Loras to take because it wasn’t natural for Renly and it wasn’t normal, and even the anger was better than that. However, the look of building wrath slowly passed away from Renly’s features as he stared over at Loras. It was like he had come to a silent realization in his head without any further words being said between them. Renly breathed deep once more, and when he let it out, the last little appearance of the anger on his face went with it.

 

“You’re right,” Renly said softly. “As usual.”

 

“Of course, I’m right,” Loras agreed, letting himself smile for real this time. “I’m always right, and you always refuse to listen to me, and it always brings you trouble because of it. One of these days, you need to stop acting on what you _want_ to do and listen to my advice because if you keep doing this, Renly, I’m not going to be able to help you. I can’t fix everything once you’ve already wrecked it, so stop throwing around your wrecking ball and start taking things a little bit more seriously before it all blows up in your face and ruins that adorable mug of yours.”

 

Loras had gently taken a hold of Renly’s face to get him to look at him, and Renly stared back with a pained expression. He was silent for a long time as if he didn’t know what to say, or didn’t want to say it, but eventually, it came out anyway.

 

“All right,” Renly agreed in a quiet voice. “I’ll listen to you.”

 

“Good,” Loras said, and he stood up to lean over the tub, giving Renly a quick kiss on the mouth. When he pulled back, he shot an amused look at Renly. “Now, get out of the tub before you age four more decades and shrivel up into a tiny raisin.”

 

Loras stepped away from the tub and grabbed a towel to hand it to Renly before he left the bathroom to go change into some nightclothes. Dawn was breaking over the horizon, but Loras had worked a nightshift tonight, and today, he was going to sleep through the daylight hours. Once he had changed into his boxers and t-shirt, he realized how exhausted he felt after a long night at work, so he crawled into their bed under the thick but cool sheets, rested his head upon the soft pillow, and closed his eyes.

 

After some time when he was nearly half way asleep, he felt Renly slide into the bed next to him and put his arm around Loras’s body. A soft smile creased Loras’s mouth, and he let out a heavy breath of contentment before falling asleep in Renly’s arms.

 

 


	48. I Can Be Your China Doll

_* * *_

 

“Yoo-hoo, Earth to Sansa! Earth to Sansa!” Arya called out as loudly as possible, passing her hand in front of Sansa’s face to get her attention.

 

Sansa quickly noticed the hand in front of her face and wrinkled her nose in annoyance, pulling her head back to put some distance between her and Arya’s hand. She cut a look at Arya, though it wasn’t an angry look. More like a slightly irritated and confused look for why Arya felt the need to holler at her and wave her hand about like that in front of her face. Gendry laughed at them, and Sansa cut her look at him next, but Gendry just smiled back at her and popped another peanut into his mouth, grinning afterwards as he chewed on it.

 

“I’m right here,” Sansa said, bringing her gaze back to Arya for a brief moment. She rolled her eyes at her sister before returning them back to the rolling green park land in front of her. “I haven’t left the earth yet,” Sansa added in a faraway voice, focusing once more on the hilly terrain that looked much like an open field in most directions under the midday sunlight. Here or there, however, it was speckled with dark green trees. In either direction reaching across a far distance, the trees fenced in the park along the edges. Beyond the edges of those trees, the high rising buildings of Kingsland towered into the faded blue sky, a testament to industry and deforestation. Sansa frowned at her thoughts. Sometimes, she thought, she would have loved to have lived in medieval times when the world was bright and beautiful and fresh.

 

At least she would think that until she remembered how short and barbaric people’s lives were in those days, and then she quickly changed her mind about that business. With any luck, if Sansa had lived in the medieval ages, they would have married her off to some really revolting and really rich man before she was even fourteen. Sansa’s eyes went wide at such a horrible thought. It was a good thing she lived in modern times where most women in the world could choose who they wanted to marry and even choose who they wanted to date before they decided to _get_ married. Sansa couldn’t imagine having to marry someone and sleep with them before _dating_ them.

 

Despite her slightly negative thoughts, it was still a beautiful day out in Kingswood Park. Admittedly, though, Sansa was a little bored by now. They had played a game of catch, a game of tag, which Sansa had kept losing over and over multiple times to Arya and Gendry, and then they even tried their hands at fishing for a little bit down by the stream. All out of things to do, they had taken a seat on one of the park benches and started lounging. Sansa had tuned Arya and Gendry out earlier as the two of them began a conversation about school this year. School was the last thing on Sansa’s mind. She was all caught up in her classes. She had finished all of her assignments, and she didn’t want to spend her weekend talking about school.

 

“Oh, but you were working on it,” Gendry told Sansa, popping yet another peanut into his mouth.

 

Arya leaned back on the bench, opening her mouth wide, and Gendry threw one of the peanuts at her. Arya moved her head back and caught it with ease, looking proud of herself for it, and lifted her head again. As she chewed on the peanut Gendry had thrown her, she turned to look Sansa from her end of the bench. “Yeah, like Gendry said,” Arya chimed in next. “You were working on it. What’s got you so faraway, anyway? We’re out here in the nice sunshine of the park, and you look like you’re on another planet.”

 

“Nothing in particular,” Sansa said with a shrug of her shoulders. “I just feel a little bit like the third wheel.”

 

Gendry snorted at Sansa’s remark. “Third wheel, schmird wheel,” he scoffed, waving his hand dismissively. “We’re a circle. Here, Arya, come here. Let’s make a circle. We’ve got to make Sansa feel better.”

 

“I’m not making a _circle_ ,” Sansa told him, but Arya was already scooting closer. Sansa and Arya were sitting on the bench, and Gendry was sitting cross-legged on the ground. It was more of a triangle than a circle once they were all positioned in place, but Gendry insisted it was a ‘circle of friendship’ and Sansa wasn’t allowed to feel out of place in it.

 

Sansa rolled her eyes yet again.

 

“I still feel out of place,” she said, “ _and_ it’s a triangle, not a circle.”

 

Gendry gaped at her. “How dare you question the circle?” he asked her, sounding wounded with her observation. He was obviously playing, so Sansa couldn’t help but laugh at him because it was so silly.

 

“Yeah, Sansa,” Arya fired back as well, smirking as she looked sideways at her sister, “how _dare_ you question the circle.”

 

“I’ll question the damn circle if I want to,” Sansa shot back, thought she was smiling, “because it’s _not_ a circle, it’s a triangle.”

 

Arya burst out laughing so hard she nearly fell off the bench. She slapped her legs a couple of times in a row in her amusement, settling down into a giggle. “Oh my _god_ ,” Arya said, “you sounded _just_ like Sandor when you said that.”

 

Sansa’s eyes grew wide. “I did not,” she protested.

 

Gendry was laughing, too. “Ah, she’s right!” he exclaimed. “I’ve only been around him a few times, but you sounded _just_ like him when you said that.”

 

“Oh, shut up, you two!” Sansa fumed at them, though it wasn’t like she was angry. A bit flustered, maybe, but not angry. “I did not sound just like him.”

 

“You did, too!” Gendry said.

 

“I did not!”

 

“Did, too!” Arya chimed in again, using a sing-song voice as she grinned at Sansa.

 

Sansa stopped arguing them, letting them have their joke. As the day wore on, though, it was getting too late to stay at the park, so they packed up what few things they had brought with them and headed back out to Gendry’s car. The three of them had ridden to Kingswood Park from Gendry’s house after walking there, and once they got back to Gendry’s house, they would walk back home. Gendry didn’t like risking driving up to their house to drop them off. Even though Sansa’s relationship with Sandor had been discovered by their mother, Catelyn had yet to discover Arya’s relationship with Gendry. For now, Arya wanted to keep it that way, too.

 

After all, their father hadn’t taken very well to Sansa seeing a man almost twice her age. Ned was still resolutely against it, even though Catelyn had given Sansa her permission. Catelyn allowed Sansa to go see Sandor as long as she kept her informed of when she was going over to his apartment or going out somewhere on a date with him. Sometimes, though, they weren’t dates, and Sansa just accompanied Sandor whenever he went into town for something. Since Ned hadn’t been accepting of Sansa seeing someone older than her, Arya said he definitely wouldn’t accept her seeing Gendry. Arya was a year younger than Sansa, so if Ned was strict with Sansa, he would be even stricter with Arya. Besides, neither one of them were sure if Catelyn would even be okay with both of their daughters seeing older men, so Sansa had agreed that it probably wasn’t a good idea for either of their parents to find out about Gendry.

 

Sandor hadn’t been over for dinner a second time within the past week and a half. Sansa imagined it was because of her parents fighting, and so Catelyn had relented to allow Ned some measure of respect by not forcing him to deal with Sandor at dinner. She had spoken quietly to Sansa about it, telling her to just give her father some time. It wasn’t going to be easy for him to accept it, and time was the only way either one of them were going to get Ned on their side. Sansa had agreed with her mother, of course, and so they didn’t speak about Sandor around Ned, but everyone knew that Sansa was still seeing him and it made the air around the house uncomfortable at times. Arya had jokingly said once that she could feel it strangling her windpipe whenever she walked into a room with the three of them.

 

Bran and Rickon had been accepting, but Rickon was only seven and Bran was just naturally nonchalant about most things. Bran had even come to Sansa one day to ask her if Sandor knew any sports. Sansa, of course, didn’t actually know if Sandor knew any sports. When she had told Bran this, he looked crestfallen for a second or two, and then he appeared nonchalant again, said, “Oh, okay,” and immediately darted off back to whatever he had been doing before he had come into Sansa’s room. Sansa wasn’t sure what all of that was about since Bran didn’t elaborate further, but she had ignored it at the time and focused back on the report she had been writing for one of her classes.

 

Once Arya, Gendry, and Sansa put their belongings into Gendry’s car, they all hopped into the vehicle. Arya sat up front as usual, and Sansa had taken the backseat. Gendry drove them back to his house, but once they got out of the vehicle and Sansa had grabbed her things, Arya was following Gendry inside his house. Sansa narrowed her gaze at them, wondering what Arya was up to now. She had thought the two of them were going to go home together.

 

“Aren’t you coming, Arya?” Sansa called out to her, and she had to shield her eyes against the sun as it lowered in the sky beyond Gendry’s home.

 

Arya turned around near the door to look back at Sansa. “No, you go ahead!” she called back. “I’m going to stay here with Gendry for a while!”

 

“Oh,” Sansa said, though it was low enough that only she could hear it. Arya definitely wouldn’t have heard it. Arya smiled back at her, waving goodbye for the time being, and disappeared into Gendry’s house through the open garage. Sansa heard the door shut rather than saw it, and she turned around with a deep sigh to walk back home down the sidewalk by herself. Halfway there, she began to avoid the cracks in the sidewalk like it was a game, but only because it was a long walk and she was bored without Arya to chatter away at her.

 

When she got home, it was almost suppertime. Sansa told their parents that Arya was still at Jeyne’s house for now, but that she would be home soon. Catelyn and Ned accepted her lie as the truth without question, and Sansa felt bad for it, but Arya’s business wasn’t her business to tell to their parents. It wore on later into the evening, and Sansa took a shower to get cleaned up for the night. She washed her hair with a shampoo that smelled like sweet apples, washed her face as well, and brushed her teeth. As Sansa dried her hair, she thought about going to bed early tonight. Tomorrow was Sunday, and nothing was going on tomorrow unless Sansa decided to go to church with her mother and Rickon.

 

She wasn’t spending time with Sandor today because he had work, which he always had on the weekends unless he specially made time off for himself. Sansa thought about one of these days asking him to take a weekend off so they could spend a decent amount of time together. So far, they had gone out on a few short dates this past week and a half and that was it. As she pulled a brush through her hair, she stopped to think about how long she had known him. It had been a little over five months by now, though they had only been seeing each other for about three of those months. What few boyfriends Sansa had before Joffrey had been very short relationships, so it struck her as something that Sandor had stuck around her for this long and hadn’t left her yet.

 

Sansa was beginning to think maybe he wouldn’t leave her. Sandor should have been harder to please given his age, Sansa thought, but he had never gotten irritated with her like her old boyfriends had done. It didn’t count that Joffrey wouldn’t leave her because Sansa always believed he only stuck around her because he could hurt her and she never said anything about it to anyone. Sandor was different. He had never hurt her before, nor did he ever speak to her as Joffrey had spoken to her. Sansa wondered if she ever told her father how Joffrey had been with her that maybe Ned would think differently of Sandor, and some part of her resolved how that could be a good idea for some kind of improvement with her father. She didn’t want him to always hate Sandor, and maybe if he knew that, it would change a lot of things between them.

 

As the hour drew later, Sansa laid her head on her pillow and closed her eyes to go to sleep. She drifted off for a while until she felt a nudge against her shoulder, which interrupted her rest. Her eyes opened, but stayed squinted for a moment, until her room came into focus. There, above her, was Arya’s face. Sansa opened her eyes more fully, sitting up in her bed. Arya was cross-legged on it beside her, grinning at her like she was keeping a secret. Sansa noticed how Arya was already in her pajamas, and she wondered just when Arya had gotten home. It was a miracle how their parents never seemed to notice her absence sometimes.

 

“When did you get home?” Sansa asked her, looking a little dumbfounded for the question.

 

“A little while ago,” Arya said simply.

 

“But how?” Sansa asked further, and she shook her head in confusion. “Didn’t Mum and Dad notice you were gone?”

 

“Nope,” Arya answered with a huge grin.

 

“How do you do that?” Sansa pushed with disbelief in her voice. “I don’t understand it.”

 

“I came in for a brief moment, said hi to them, and I left again,” Arya went on to inform Sansa. “It’s a very easy trick, and then you just prepare your bed with a bunch of pillows to make it look like you’re asleep, so when they open your door to check on you, no one notices you’re gone.”

 

“I hate you,” Sansa said, though she didn’t mean it.

 

“I could teach you,” Arya told her happily. “I know you want to learn. You’re just dying to go visit Sandor, aren’t you?”

 

“No,” Sansa began slowly.

 

“Horseshit,” Arya shot back. “You want to visit him in the middle of the night, all sneaky and secretive like, and makey outie with him.”

 

“I do not!” Sansa said, growing flustered with the direction of the conversation.

 

“Oh, c’mon, Sansa, you can’t lie to me.”

 

Sansa sighed in exasperation. Come to think of it, she did that a lot because of Arya. “I can’t visit him in the night,” she explained. “Mum won’t trust me or him if I do.”

 

Arya shrugged her shoulders. “Mum doesn’t have to find out.”

 

Sansa gave her sister a pointed look. “Mum will find out if I leave in the middle of the night.”

 

“No, she won’t,” Arya said. “I’ll cover you.”

 

Sansa opened her mouth to say something, but she didn’t immediately speak. It took her a moment to find the words. “Why?”

 

Arya gave Sansa a look like she was an alien from outer space. “Because you’re my _sister_ ,” she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Why not?”

 

It wasn’t what Sansa meant when she asked why, but she figured it was as good an answer as any that she was going to get out of Arya. Sansa thought about it for a moment, weighing the pros and cons. It would be nice to spend some time with Sandor without having to worry about school the next day. She just had to make sure that their mother didn’t find out—or their father, for that matter. “Okay,” Sansa relented at last, glancing over at Arya. “What do we do?”

 

Arya grinned at her, getting up from the bed. She told Sansa to get ready while she prepared her bed. Sansa wanted to get dressed quickly without wasting much time, so she chose a dress instead of jeans. Slipping on some sandals, she went to the mirror and pulled her hair into a ponytail. It was dark, and so Sansa didn’t see the point in makeup. She much doubted that Sandor would care, so she forewent that part of getting ready. Sansa grabbed one of her thicker cardigans to act as a jacket in case she got cold, and when she finally turned around to look at her bed, Arya had made a masterpiece out of it. It looked like a real person was sleeping underneath the covers.

 

“Wow,” Sansa said, nearly dropping her jaw. “That’s good.”

 

“I know, right?” Arya asked, putting her hands on her hips and looking proud of herself for her job well-done. “I’ve done this forever. Mum and Dad will never know. You just have to be back by a decent hour in the morning before they come in here and decide to shake you awake for sleeping too late.”

 

Sansa actually found herself grinning at that, but then her grin fell from her face. “Wait, how am I supposed to get there?”

 

“I texted Gendry while you were getting ready,” Arya said, pulling her phone out of her pocket. “He’s on his way.”

 

Sansa looked skeptical. “And he’s okay with driving me around in the middle of the night?”

 

Arya shrugged again. “It’s not like he was asleep, and it gives him an excuse to visit me once he gets back from dropping you off.”

 

“Oh, ok,” Sansa said.

 

“C’mon,” Arya said, hurrying to Sansa’s side. “Let’s sneak you downstairs!”

 

Arya led Sansa down the staircase, scoped out the area before proceeding forward into the living room, and helped Sansa escape out the front door. As Sansa headed into the cool night air of her front yard, she felt a bit devious heading out like this without her parents’ knowledge. When she turned her head at the end of the driveway, she spotted Gendry pulling up at the end of the road. Sansa hurried the rest of the way. Her heart was beating erratically inside her chest, and she wanted to get out of sight as quickly as possible.

 

Gendry gave her a knowing smirk when she got into the passenger seat. “You little rebel,” he teased her, and Sansa shot a playful glare at him. Gendry grinned at her reaction, driving them to Sandor’s apartment complex. Gendry was fairly quiet aside from that, though, and the rest of the drive went without conversation. Once they reached the familiar tall building, Gendry parked the car and looked over at her. “Have fun!” he said, and Sansa rolled her eyes and laughed a little before stepping out of his vehicle and closing the door. She walked inside of the building, taking the elevator up to Sandor’s floor. It was late enough that he should be home by now, so she wasn’t really worried about him being gone.

 

Sansa reached his door and knocked on it. There wasn’t an answer immediately, but Sansa waited patiently as she heard movement inside the apartment. Instead of the door opening, though, Sansa heard Sandor’s voice call out through it.

 

“Who is it?” he asked, sounding on edge.

 

“It’s me,” Sansa told him, and she heard him twist the latch on the lock. Sandor opened the door, staring out at her like she was the last person he expected to see outside of his door, and she smiled up at him. “Hey,” she said. “I came by to visit you.”

 

“Sansa, it’s really late—”

 

“It’s okay,” she said. “Arya’s covering me.”

 

Sandor narrowed his eyes. “Did you sneak out?”

 

Sansa felt a little abashed by his question. “I did,” she admitted quietly, “but it’s all right. They won’t find out.”

 

“I don’t want to make your mum upset—”

 

Sansa crossed over the threshold, though, putting her arms around Sandor’s middle. He was still dressed in his work clothes, and there was the smallest scent of liquor to them. Suddenly, Sansa had the urge to drink something. She pressed her nose against his shirt, looking up at him and smiling. “Please?” she said, and she watched as the expression on his face caved—as it always did with her when she pleaded with him—and it caused her smile to grow bigger.

 

Sandor’s hand went to the side of her head, and he laid it against her hair. “You’ll be the death of me,” he said in a low voice, and it sounded like he was teasing her, but Sansa couldn’t be sure.

 

“As long as it’s not tonight,” she threw back at him in a whisper, and Sandor tilted his head back. He sighed at the ceiling.

 

“All right,” Sandor finally conceded, and he closed the door while Sansa’s arms were still around him. He looked down at her like he expected her to let him go for a least a minute, but Sansa didn’t want to let him go. She rubbed her hands slowly up and down on his back, gazing up at him from his chest, and the look on his face changed to something both more serious and curious than before. “What is it?” Sandor asked her, and Sansa grinned at him again. She pulled away from Sandor, but it was only to take his hand and slowly lead him through his apartment towards the hallway.

 

Sandor realized her intent and destination right away, and his eyes cut upward to look at his open bedroom door before they even reached it. Sansa led him inside, and she let go of him long enough to close the door behind them. When she turned back to Sandor, he looked a little on edge again as he had first at the front door, but Sansa approached him again and put her hands on his waist. She backed him up to the bed, raising a hand to his chest and pushing at it gently to indicate he should lie down. Sandor didn’t lie down, though.

 

“Sansa,” he whispered, “I don’t think we should—”

 

Slipping her hand behind his neck, Sansa pulled him down for a kiss to shut him up. Normally, she was the one telling him what they should and shouldn’t do, so it was a nice change of pace to be the one on the other side of the fence for once. She had told him not to treat her differently since he found out those things about her and Joffrey, but she felt like he was being more careful and reluctant with her all the same. It was entirely possible Sandor’s reluctance was emboldening her as well, and it gave her an opportunity to grab the reins.

 

Sansa had hoped it had nothing to do with his three little words spoken to her, but she found she wanted him more than before. Some part of her thought it had more to do with her sharing what she had with him and him sharing what he had with her. Sansa trusted him, and that trust was opening her more and more to Sandor. It was helping her to step out of her shell when she was around him, letting him see more of what was in her head and in her thoughts. She liked being able to share things with Sandor, but it slowly opened her in other ways, too. She had always found him desirable, but suddenly, he was _more_ desirable. Sansa wasn’t sure how that was possible, but it was somehow.

 

When she parted her mouth against his and touched her tongue to his lips, Sandor opened his mouth to hers. Sansa felt his hands on her lower back, and then one moved to her waist to hold her there firmly in his grip while the hand on her back pulled her closer. She made a soft noise in the back of her throat, delving her tongue past his lips to taste him and deepen the kiss, and Sandor let her guide the motions. Eventually, he pushed back, wanting to take some of the control. Sansa felt his hand on the back of her neck, pulling her to him as his warm tongue slid against hers. Her whole body was already tingling, and Sansa slid her cardigan off her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor.

 

She pushed at his chest again, and Sandor accepted her direction, sitting back on the bed but taking her with him. Sansa had to crawl onto his lap, straddling him in her dress. She realized how bare she was against his lap, but he was wearing jeans instead of boxers this time, so she didn’t think about it too much. Sandor pulled at her hair band, easing it out of her hair as he kissed her. It caused her hair to fall down around them, and he ran his hand through it. Sandor moaned softly against her mouth, though it still held the deep quality of his voice, and he finally held her head in place with his hand to deepen the kiss as he tried to gain more leverage over her.

 

Sansa pushed her palm against his chest once more, separating their lips from each other. Sandor took her cue from that, and he carefully laid himself down upon the bed. Sansa leaned over him, meeting his mouth again with hers, and his hands went to her waist to hold her with a tight grip. She continued to move her lips against his, slipping her tongue into his mouth and loving the way it felt when their tongues touched with such heat surrounding them, and she enjoyed every little sensation that it evoked in her to share this with him. It was only kissing, but there was something deeply intimate about it with Sandor. Maybe it was because she had never liked someone this much before. Sansa wasn’t sure, but every nerve of hers felt on fire with his touch.

 

She pressed her hands to his chest, running them along the sides of his torso. Sansa pulled away from his mouth to focus on unbuttoning his shirt. “Sansa—” Sandor began, but she cut him off with one simple motion. She brought her finger to her lips and held it upright there as she looked down at him. The words fell off Sandor’s tongue, and he looked up at the ceiling to exhale a sudden breath. She finished with his buttons, pushing open his shirt. The only downside was he had a simple white t-shirt underneath that one, and so Sansa pushed at the button up shirt to peel it off his arms. Sandor helped her get it off, and then she pushed upward at his white t-shirt, lifting it from the bottom hem.

 

Her hands were usually cold, and when they touched his skin, he jolted at it. Sandor’s chest was warm, though, and she slowly ran her fingers and palms against his skin, which helped to heat up her hands. She bent down and kissed him, and then she tried something relatively knew for her and dragged her tongue along his skin. Sandor drew in a sharp breath, but otherwise remained still beneath her. Sansa kissed him again, and then she nipped at his flesh. Though she expected him to jump at that, he didn’t. Her eyes glanced up at him, and she saw that Sandor’s eyes had drifted to a close.

 

Sansa ran her hands even lower between them, brushing her fingers along the waistband of his jeans. His muscles seemed to shudder at her touch, and he drew in another sharp breath somewhere above her. Sansa wondered what he was thinking as she drew her nails gently along his skin there, eliciting the most pleasant responses out of him. Suddenly, she hooked her fingers underneath the waistband of his jeans and tugged at them with a strong grip, but she made no move to undo them or try to take them off of him. Still, the action was enough to startle Sandor, and he lifted his head from the bed to look at her. Sandor looked worried at what she might do next, and he shook his head. “Sansa, don’t—”

 

“I won’t,” she whispered back to him, but she lowered her lips to his skin and kissed him there. Sandor’s head fell back to the bed, his breathing heavy and erratic with every teasing motion of her lips and tongue, the latter of which she flicked out against his skin to lick him. One of her hands passed over his thigh, running along its length and back again, and but she never touched him _there_. She was starting to get curious enough and turned on enough to want to, but something was holding her back. It didn’t feel like fear anymore. Sandor had just told her not to, too, and she had to wonder how much willpower went into saying that one word for him.

 

She crawled back up his body, but Sandor pushed himself up from the bed to sit upright. His motion brought Sansa upright again, too. His hand slipped behind her head, quickly pulling her towards his mouth, and his other hand slid around to her back to hold her there. Sansa wrapped both arms around Sandor’s neck and shoulders, returning his kiss with as much fervor as he put into it. She scooted in his lap, which was almost like rocking against him, and Sandor groaned deep in his throat—and suddenly, he stopped kissing her and pulled away.

 

His hand drifted from the back of her head to the side of her face, and then it slid down to her neck. He gazed at her in the darkness, and she felt his thumb graze against her jaw. Sandor was quiet for a long time, just staring at her features, his eyes slowly roaming over her face. Finally, after what seemed like minutes of silence, he spoke to her.

 

“I don’t want us to move too fast,” Sandor said slowly, as if he had to really think about it before he said it out loud. “I never thought I would say that in all my life, but I want you to trust me. I want you to know what you want. I don’t want you to give me something because I want it. You’ll resent me for it. You’ll cry when I’m not around.” His thumb passed over her bottom lip, which felt like it was shaking with each word out of his mouth. “You’ve been through a lot,” Sandor murmured, “and I don’t want to add to those scars.”

 

It took her a moment to realize there were hot tears spilling down her cheeks, and she raised her hand to wipe them away, but before she could do it, his hand reached her cheeks first and brushed them away for her. Sandor slipped his hand behind her neck again and pulled her close to him, and Sansa felt her arms wrap around his body of their own volition to hug Sandor. He wrapped his arms around her as well, returning the embrace with a surprising amount of gentleness.

 

“I care about you,” he said close to her ear, “and I want you to believe that first.”

 

Sansa nodded her head, not knowing what else to do. “Okay,” she whispered back, and she felt his hand brush over her hair down her head, her neck, and along her back. She didn’t think about it until he said it, but he was right. She was used to just giving Joffrey what he wanted to make him happy, and Sandor was afraid she would do that with him, too. Maybe in different ways, but the psychology was the same, and Sandor recognized that before she even did. She wanted to be happy with Sandor. She didn’t want to find another thing to cry over at night.

 

She laughed suddenly, a soft laugh, but joyful all the same. “You’re going to make me fall in love with you,” Sansa teased him, and it was just a joke, but Sandor’s hands suddenly tightened against her because of it.

 

“Maybe that’s my goal,” Sandor murmured to her, and he pulled back from Sansa to look her in the eyes as he brought his hand back to her cheek again. The serious quality of his face became teasing for a moment as well, and she saw his nose twitch with the effort. “Make you fall in love with me, not fall in bed with me.”

 

Sansa bit her bottom lip, smiling at him in the dark. She pushed at his chest, making the two of them fall back to the bed. She grinned down at him despite the recent tear streaks on her face. “Oops,” she whispered. “Too late.”

 

Sandor raised his eyebrows in an almost suggestive manner. “Make your clothes fall off?” he added then, and Sansa could tell he was just joking this time with her.

 

“Nice try,” Sansa said, still grinning at him, and she shook her head, “but not going to happen.”

 

“Can’t say I didn’t put the effort in.”

 

Sansa laughed out loud at him. “You’re horrible,” she said.

 

“I’m dreadful,” Sandor agreed. “I’m bad company. All I do is drink and complain. And hit things. I hit things a lot.”

 

Sansa gently slapped her hand on his chest. “You’re such a dork,” she added, giggling.

 

Sandor pointed his finger at her. “Now, that is one thing I am not,” he said. “I am a vicious, vicious man.”

 

Sansa leaned in close to his face. “You’re a dork,” she whispered.

 

“You’re testing me,” Sandor told her. “You better watch out. I’ll Hulk out on you. You just wait and see. I’ve got a lot of pent up anger I need to release in very unhealthy ways—”

 

Sansa couldn’t help it. She was dying of laughter by now. Had she been sitting up, she would have been doubled over, but she was already doubled over on top of Sandor, so she couldn’t get any lower. She hadn’t expected to end the night in a fit of laughter, but she couldn’t stop it. She started wheezing from her hysterics, and Sandor actually seemed to get a little worried.

 

“Are you all right?” Sandor asked her, his tone a mix of amusement and concern, and he placed his hand behind her head. Sansa tried to nod her head for him.

 

“I’m fine,” she breathed out, and she looked up at him to grin, her eyes glittering in the dark. “You almost killed me,” Sansa joked, having to take a deep breath midway through her sentence, “with your telekinetic mind powers . . . ”

 

“Bullshit,” Sandor said seriously. “I wasn’t using them.”

 

Sansa started laughing again, and Sandor wrapped his arms around her and shook her gently.

 

“Stop that,” he told her firmly. “You’re going to keel over—”

 

Sansa snorted. “I will not,” she shot back.

 

“Will, too.”

 

“Will not,” she argued, breathing in quickly after another laugh.

 

“Will, _too_ ,” Sandor repeated, and he took her by the back of her head and pulled her down for another kiss to shut her up once and for all. It worked, and Sansa’s laughter died off, replaced with the eagerness of her lips against his for another kiss. She lost herself in his mouth until their motions slowed down once more and the two of them settled themselves comfortably upon his bed in the aftermath, choosing comfort over passion. Sansa lay down with her back to Sandor, and he wrapped his arm over her side, resting his arm right under hers.

 

Sansa took a deep breath and snuggled into his embrace, feeling happy and content in a way she had not felt in a very long time.

 

 


	49. Fire and Gasoline

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** This is for user lonely_wolf81, who said, “Have to admit I miss the hot and heavy sansan.” Of course, hot and heavy SanSan comes with a price. *g*

_* * *_

 

Darkness still hung in his room when Sandor woke up in the middle of the night. He was uncomfortable and entangled up with Sansa upon his bed. His left arm, which had somehow gotten underneath her body, was numb from the pressure on top of it, and he had fallen asleep in a pair of jeans, which was far from relaxing. Carefully, Sandor disentangled himself from her without waking her up, and he sat up in bed to run his hand over his eyes. When he glanced up at his window, it was still pitch black outside. He must have not been asleep for very long if it wasn’t even daylight yet. Sandor gave himself a moment of just sitting upright to lose his grogginess before rising from the bed and heading to the bathroom down the hall.

 

He took a quick shower, especially given how he hadn’t gotten around to one before he had fallen into bed, and wrapped a towel around his waist when he was done. Once he made it back into his bedroom, he grabbed a pair of boxers and a loose fitting tee. It took him a moment before he remembered Sansa was in his bedroom, and Sandor turned around to see her lying on his bed and breathing soundly in her sleep. He walked out of his bedroom and back to the bathroom to change into the t-shirt and boxers before he returned to his bedroom again. Sandor wasn’t even entertaining the idea of staying awake, so he returned back to the bed.

 

Despite the shower, his head was still heavy with the need for rest. It was cool and soft between the sheets, and he moved close to Sansa until he was pressed against her back. His arm went around her waist, and he rested his face in the crook of her neck. It was almost funny, he thought, these little things he did with her. Sandor had never been attached to anything or anyone before, but he found himself attached to her. There was something about Sansa, an innocent and compassionate girl with the world in her eyes and too much love in her heart, that had pulled him in hook, line, and sinker. He might have mocked her once upon a time. Her qualities were things he once found laughable, unreasonable. Something to get you killed or kidnapped or ruined one way or another. People didn’t go through life with their heads in the clouds and land safely on their feet. How could you land safely when you couldn’t even see where you were going?

 

Certainly, all of her gentle qualities were not the recipe for a happy life. At least, he thought that once. Sandor wasn’t sure how he felt about that now. Different, of course. Elder Brother had shown him the possibilities of a life that wasn’t driven by hate, violence, or chasing another high. Learning that had been a long hard process, and it had taken all of the qualities displayed in Sansa to get him there. Elder Brother had shown Sandor kindness, compassion, honesty, and acceptance without judgment. Sandor had fought with him in the beginning, and he had fought hard. He had broken the rules at first until he learned that breaking the rules only made him wish he was dead. Sandor had never realized until then how much he had hated his old life. It had taken a mental breakdown for him to realize he needed to change if he wanted to survive, or he would dig his own grave and etch out his own tombstone with each remaining breath.

 

Sandor had needed to change. He had to find a new way to live his life, letting go of the old way, which wasn’t to say it didn’t linger as a whisper in the back of his mind from time to time. Sandor’s fingers had itched for blood when Renly had threatened Sansa, and it had taken all of Sandor’s willpower not to take it that far. He had craved the emptiness and numbness of the bottle on more than one occasion until he could force himself to remember that alcohol wouldn’t help him, only drown him. He had nearly tried to use Sansa as a sexual outlet for his frustrations and fears until her hand had stopped him and he realized _this is not me_ —and hadn’t been for a long time. Sandor had faltered on that thin line more than once, but so far he had always pulled himself back from the abyss before he fell into it.

 

He wanted to be good enough for Sansa. Sandor thought this as he looked at her lying there in his arms, in his bed, and in his apartment away from the knowledge of her parents and her family, save for her sister. Sansa trusted him and his intentions enough to share a bed with him. There was a time when he was attracted to her and it bothered him, but Sandor stopped caring about that somewhere along the way because he realized she had become important to him somehow. Suddenly, after that, her age seemed like the least of his issues until it dwindled into no issue at all. Yet, that wasn’t entirely true. Sansa was a young lady still learning, and while Sandor had his moments where he was uncouth, he didn’t want to be the reason why Sansa changed who she was. If she stopped being who she was and stopped trusting people all because of him and some poor decision he made with her, Sandor wouldn’t have been able to live with himself.

 

It was the reason why he told her what he did a few hours ago. If they went too far too soon, she would resent him for it. She would cry when he wasn’t around. Instead of him being the person she wanted, he’d be the one who ruined it for her. Sandor had said it for her sake as much as for his own. If he had been the reason for causing her that confusion and pain, he wouldn’t have been able to forgive himself for it. Sansa still needed time to heal, even if she seemed perfectly normal on the outside with her smiles and her amusement and her bright eyes. It didn’t mean things were all right within. Abuse was no laughing matter, and Sandor knew all about abuse and what it could do to a person’s insides.

 

Amidst all of his thoughts, his hand rose along her arm. It came up to pull her hair out of her face, tucking it gently behind her ear. His fingers then grazed her cheek, and the very thought that someone could _strike_ her there filled him with rage. Clenching his hand into a fist, Sandor tried his best to will the feeling away. He didn’t want to think about that, not right now in this moment with her. Rage was the last thing he wanted to feel, so he pushed the urge down and swallowed it whole. When his nerves relaxed once more, Sandor rested his hand against her shoulder before he ran it back down her arm to her elbow and up again. Leaning forward, he kissed Sansa on the niche between her neck and her shoulder. In the darkness of his room, he wanted to forget all about boundaries, but he knew he wouldn’t. Just because Sandor had said they ought to wait didn’t mean he was just going to stop thinking about it, and his thoughts were veering towards anything but innocence right now.

 

His fingers gently curled under the loose neck of her dress, pulling it aside and down over the smooth expanse of her shoulder. Sandor leaned forward, his mouth coming down on her shoulder and kissing her there. Sansa stirred in her sleep, and when his tongue came out to flick against her skin, she shivered beneath his touch and turned until her back was on the mattress and her side was pressed against him. Sansa slowly opened her eyes, focusing on his face in the near blackness, but she saw his features and the softest trace of a smile appeared on her lips. Sansa leaned towards him, pressing her lips to his, and Sandor hungrily accepted the kiss despite his best intentions to stay subdued. His hand cupped the side of her face, pulling her closer, and Sansa rolled further into his embrace until she was lying on her side and they were face to face upon the bed.

 

Maybe it was because of the darkness, or maybe it was because of some sudden urge, but Sansa was bolder than she had been earlier. Her leg hooked around his hip, drawing him closer, and Sandor deepened the kiss as his tongue slipped past her lips into her warm mouth. He tried to focus on her mouth instead of letting his hands roam. Sansa moaned softly in the dark, and her hand sought out the hem of his shirt. She slid her hand underneath it, running it up along his bare skin, and Sandor thought maybe he should have kept his clothes on. If her hands got any more adventurous, he wasn’t wearing very much. Sansa brought her hand around to his back, though, splaying her fingers against him and tightening her grip. Sandor kissed her harder, eliciting another moan from her throat. The leg over his hip pulled at him until they were flush against each other, and Sandor wanted to worry, but he wanted to keep kissing her, too.

 

His hand was in her hair, and Sansa’s hand roamed down his back to his waist again. They twisted and turned into their kiss, each one of them desperate for the touch of lips and tongue. Sansa bit down on his bottom lip, tugging at it, and Sandor caught himself groaning at the pleasurable shock it brought him. He returned the bite, and Sansa moaned three times in succession like she was on the verge of something. Sandor’s thoughts grew darker with the sounds from her throat, and he grasped the back of her head, crushing her against his mouth. His hand slid down her body next, down her side, over her hip, and down to her bottom. He pulled her closer, and Sansa rocked her hips against him. It was the darkness, Sandor thought. The darkness was letting them get away with themselves.

 

Sansa rolled them over until Sandor was on his back and she was above him. She kissed him passionately, her hair making a curtain around their faces, tickling his skin. Sandor ran his hand up through her hair from the side of her face, pulling it out of the way before holding her down against him. He thought that this was safer, that Sansa’s hands couldn’t roam from this angle, but he was wrong about that. Sansa slid down his body, breaking their kiss, and her hands slipped down his sides to the waistband of his boxers—the same place she had gone earlier that he had told her not to go to. Her fingers hooked underneath the elastic band, and his nerves jumped from the contact. Sandor reacted pleasurably before his mind could catch up with the direction of her hands.

 

She slipped both hands underneath his boxers, and his stomach jolted as his head shot up—and Sansa’s hands slid over his hips, spreading her fingers and touching skin, before she dragged her fingers back up by the nails. It was just enough touch without being too much. She didn’t cross the line he had asked her not to cross, and she pulled her hands slowly out from under his waistband and up his sides, still using her nails against his skin. His whole body tingled from the touches and scrapes, and Sansa scooted back up to lean close to his mouth.

 

“Do you like that?” she asked him softly, and Sandor had to remember how to use words. His mouth opened at first, but nothing came out of it. Her hands were trailing up and down his sides, fingers, nails, and palms, and Sandor closed his mouth to swallow past a building lump.

 

“Yeah,” he finally murmured back, and she captured his lips in another kiss. Sandor wasn’t sure why Sansa preferred touching him over him touching her. Most women preferred it the other way around, which wasn’t to say that Sandor didn’t like being touched, but he had rarely encountered a woman who liked to do that for a man. Until Sansa was comfortable with Sandor touching her, he figured she wasn’t comfortable with them going further. It seemed to be the thing that tipped him off the most, Sansa’s discomfiture of his hands on her body. He understood why, of course, but Sansa was trying to make him forget—forget about everything with the way her lips moved against his and the way her tongue playfully swirled alongside his own.

 

Her hands somehow went from his body to his arms, finding his wrists. Sansa guided them to the bed above their heads, and Sandor didn’t protest. He heard a little metal jingle, and his curiosity almost caused him to lift his head and look up. However, Sansa delved her tongue into his mouth to keep him distracted, and Sandor stopped turning his head halfway there to groan deeply instead, bringing his focus back to her. He felt the strap before he realized what it was—Sansa’s belt, the one she had forgotten here on his headboard, the one he had forgotten was here because it had slipped out of sight, but Sansa found it and wound it around his wrists again and tied it tight. The shock of it opened Sandor’s eyes, and Sansa pulled back from him to smile at him in the darkness. Here he was again tied to his bed all because he let a pretty girl distract him long enough to make it happen.

 

“You really like tying me down,” Sandor said in a low voice, and Sansa bit on her bottom lip, worrying at it. Everything felt ten times more heightened with his hands bound down, an absurdly taunting impulse he couldn’t explain. Sansa leaned forward with her hands on his arms, running her palms along the length of them back up to his wrists again. Sandor had to briefly close his eyes, feeling each and every little pinprick of pleasure pass through him at such a simple brush of skin to skin.

 

“I do,” Sansa whispered once she reached his wrists and her mouth was tantalizingly close to his again.

 

“I’ve created a monster,” he whispered back, teasing her.

 

Sansa giggled at him. “I’m hardly a monster,” she said softly, passing her hands back down his arms and to his chest. Sandor shuddered at the motion, letting his eyes drift to a close until he wondered at why she had tied him down. Last time she had tied him down . . .

 

Sandor opened his eyes again. “What do you plan on doing to me?” he asked her through his heavy-lidded eyes, and Sansa bit her lip as she seemed to think about this.

 

“There are so _many_ things I could do,” she teased, and Sandor closed his eyes against her words. Her hands roved over his chest, spreading outward in slow circular motions. Sansa bent down and kissed his jaw before tracing a pattern down his neck with her lips. Her tongue grazed his skin, and sometimes even her teeth dragged gently along his flesh. When she had explored his neck to her satisfaction, she sat upward on top of him, and Sandor looked at her through his hazy eyes. Sansa reached down for the hem of her dress and pulled it up over her head. Sandor wasn’t expecting that. His mouth fell open at the sight of her in the dark, even if it was harder to see, in just her bra and panties. They weren’t black or lacey. They were simple and light pink, and somehow definably Sansa.

 

Some part of him wanted to turn his head away out of modesty, and some part of him wanted to tug his hands free from the board and get up from that bed in a hurry to stop her from doing whatever it was she was thinking about doing, but Sandor was frozen in place. He was frozen in place, and he was staring at her. Sansa seemed to take his lack of words and open mouth as a good sign, and she leaned forward over him again. Whether she was aware of it or not, it gave him an ample view of her cleavage. Inexplicably, though, and despite the lovely sight before him, Sandor was worried about where this was going. He could feel it twisting his heart inside his chest.

 

“Sansa,” he said softly when she was down to his level again, “we talked about this earlier . . . ”

 

“I’m not taking anything else off,” Sansa assured him, her hands on his chest again. Their gentle motions seemed to ease his heart along with her words. “I just thought you liked to look. You looked when I was in my bikini . . . ”

 

“That’s because you have a beautiful body,” Sandor found himself admitting in an unsteady voice. He could have worded that differently. Normally, his vocabulary was much more coarse than that, but he wasn’t trying to make Sansa uncomfortable, so he was watching what he said and how he said it. Sansa smiled crookedly at his response, seeming to ease up from her own tension at her choice to remove her dress.

 

She kissed him, then, holding his face on both sides with her soft hands. She used her tongue, and when she pulled back, she teased him with it by just barely touching him without kissing him. It riled up his blood, being unable to touch this beautiful half-naked girl in his lap. His hands strained against the belt holding his wrists in place above his head. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to have bruises in the morning. Sansa scooted lower across his body, settling herself exactly where she wanted to be on top of him. Her precision caused his hands to strain harder against the headboard because, this time, he was only wearing thin boxers and she was only wearing panties, and this was very, very different from last time.

 

When she rocked her hips against his, Sandor let out a strangled noise that sounded halfway between pain and pleasure. His head tipped back into the pillow. His hands were probably white from blood loss. Sansa rocked against him a second time, grinding down harder, and it elicited a deeper sound from his throat. When she rocked her hips a third time, her hands pressed down against his stomach and a soft little moan escaped her throat, and Sandor pulled the hardest he had ever pulled at that goddamn belt holding him in place.

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hissed out loud, groaning at the sensations she evoked in him, because he felt it—she was turned on, too, and the thin bits of material between them couldn’t hide it from him. Sansa began to rock in earnest now, whether it was because of the dark, or their previous drowsiness, or something else that made her lose her inhibitions, he wasn’t sure. Sandor almost wanted to turn his head to his arm just to have something to bite onto, but he settled for looking forward at Sansa instead. She saw him looking, and she rocked harder, and Sandor couldn’t suppress the groans, the strangled sounds of pleasure, or the swear words that came up out of his throat. He tried, of course, but that only made them worse.

 

Sansa didn’t stop this time either. She kept up her pace until she decided to go quicker, and once she did that, she started to moan in earnest herself. Her mouth fell open, and every sound of pleasure she made spilled forward with each rock of her hips. Sandor tipped his head back into the pillow again and closed his eyes. He knew he wasn’t going to last this time if she didn’t stop. He could feel too much, and the sounds she made were pushing him over the edge as well. Sandor wasn’t sure how long they had been doing it. It certainly wasn’t a few short minutes. It had been much longer than that before he felt the familiar sensations leading up to what would come last.

 

Sandor pulled so hard on the belt that it broke. Sansa gasped in shock, and she faltered for a moment until he rose from the bed and pulled her into his arms, holding her tight against him, one hand in her hair and the other on her back. Despite the sudden interruption, Sansa continued to rock herself against his lap and as Sandor clutched her tighter, his fingers gripping harder, Sansa pushed downward with more insistence and urgency. A slew of swear words came out of his mouth until he felt the buildup rise into a climax of light behind his eyes. Suddenly, his grip on her loosened and his breathing began to slow down. In the following moment of quietness, both of them were still.

 

He wasn’t sure how long he was still or how long Sansa was still in his arms as well, but she eventually tried to scoot in his lap as if to escape from something. Sandor almost laughed realizing what, but it came out a huff of air instead. He lay down on the bed, taking her with him. Sandor felt immensely sleepy, and he just wanted to lie down and hold her. He really wanted to hold her, and he had never wanted to hold anyone before. He closed his eyes, but he felt Sansa shifting above him, and he re-opened them to gaze at her. She was staring down at him with a question in her eyes. Sandor raised his brow at her.

 

“What is it?” he asked her, his voice a low murmur, and he brushed his hand through her hair.

 

“Did you . . . ”

 

Sandor wanted to snort at that, but he held it back. “You couldn’t tell?”

 

Sansa lowered her chin to his chest. “I wasn’t sure . . . ”

 

He knew he probably shouldn’t have been asking her such a question, but his curiosity was there and the filter between his mouth and brain had somehow gotten dislodged. “Did you?”

 

Sansa didn’t outwardly answer him, but she slowly shook her head.

 

Suddenly, for some reason, that made him feel like a bad boyfriend. Not that she had given him much of a choice in the situation. She had guided everything, tying his hands down to the bed, but Sandor had to wonder just how far he would have let himself go. He hadn’t wanted to push things, but Sansa had wanted to push things tonight. It seemed like the more he tried to refuse her things, the more she seemed to want them to an extent.

 

He wasn’t sure what possessed him to ask his next question, but he did it anyway. “Do you want me to . . . ”

 

Sansa quickly shook her head, and she slid off of his body onto the bed beside him. Sandor’s eyes followed her as she grabbed her dress and slipped it back over her head. Sansa then lay down on the bed—with a good foot or more of space between them. It caused a spark of fear in his chest. Fuck, he had let it go too far. He should have stopped her. Sandor rolled onto his side and moved closer to her without immediately touching her.

 

“Sansa?”

 

“Yeah?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

“Nothing,” Sansa answered him, but her voice was smaller than before.

 

Sandor took the risk, putting his arm around her middle. She didn’t pull away from him, though. He kissed the back of her head, and Sansa relaxed further underneath his arm. “Tell me what’s wrong, please,” he said against her hair, hoping she would answer him. Sansa was quiet for a while, but Sandor didn’t immediately push her again. He gave her some time, letting the silence be until she finally spoke to him.

 

“It’s not you,” she whispered. “Please, don’t worry about it.”

 

“It’s hard not to worry about it when you don’t want to lie next to me,” Sandor said slowly.

 

Sansa turned around in his arms. Maybe it was his choice to come to her instead of leaving her alone, but she seemed much more relaxed all of a sudden, and she slipped her arm around his body, too. “I’m sorry,” Sansa said, and she snuggled into his embrace, laying her head against his chest. “I just . . . I don’t know. I’m being childish, that’s all.”

 

Sandor seemed to get an idea of where she was going with this. “I’m not going to think differently of you,” he told her. “You know that, right?”

 

Sansa was quiet at first, and that led Sandor to believe he was right with that call. It was her insecurities, then, or at least he hoped so. Insecurities he could deal with easily. The matter he had spoken with her about a few hours ago was a different thing altogether. He felt her hand curl against his side, and she brought it up along his back. Sansa lifted her face from his chest.

 

“Okay,” she whispered. “I just think sometimes . . . you’ve been with much more experienced women than me . . . ”

 

Sandor couldn’t stop the small laugh that bubbled up in his throat. “And do you think any of those experienced women made me lose myself the way you just did?” Despite the darkness surrounding them, Sandor could see the deep blush that crept into her cheeks at his words. “Because the answer to that is ‘no.’ In fact, it’s kind of embarrassing.”

 

“What’s embarrassing?” Sansa asked, honestly perplexed by his statement.

 

If she didn’t understand it, though, Sandor wasn’t so sure he wanted to explain. “Never mind,” he said, “the point is you’re not those women. I’m not going to compare you to them, or think of you like I thought of them. That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it?”

 

Sansa fell quiet again. Her hand strayed across his back, and then she finally answered him. “I want to be important to you,” she murmured, looking up at him, and the soft glint in her eyes that caught the little bit of light from his window caused him to bring his hand to her cheek. His thumb glided over it briefly before he pulled her to his chest again.

 

He couldn’t believe she didn’t already realize that, but it wasn’t as if he shared certain things with her. It wasn’t like Sansa knew about Renly’s threat, or the way Sandor had promised coming after him if anything like that ever happened again. He could tell her things, too, but if she couldn’t see what was inside of his head and she was too afraid to just blindly believe in them, then how was she supposed to know? Maybe it was only just catching up with him now, but she had been important to him since the moment she walked into his life, whether he had known it then or not.

 

Sandor wanted to say something. He did, but no words would will themselves out of his mouth, so he brushed his hand over her hair and held the back of her head instead. Leaning forward, he pressed the lower half of his face to the top of her head. When Sandor closed his eyes, he felt himself drifting off again. He was tired, and all of this talking wasn’t helping him. Maybe he didn’t answer her, but Sansa’s hand rose up along his back and clutched him to her as well, and in the following silence, he found sleep easily enough with her in his arms.

 

 


	50. Don’t Hold Your Breath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** I wanted to make an author note of this because I get asked this question a lot, so I thought with how many times I’ve been asked it, I could address it here real quick! In regards to Sansa’s lack of sexuality or lack of description to sexual things regarding her character, that is due to my choice to archive this story with a ‘No Archive Warnings Apply’ tag and not tag it with an ‘Underage’ tag. Since her character is still seventeen right now, I won’t write scenes that reference anything sexual under her clothes, with certain body parts, or depict certain areas of her body with description. That is why there are no references to masturbation with her either. It’s a conscious choice on my behalf to not over-sexualize her until she is eighteen. I felt I could get away with some dry humping since it isn’t graphic, but I won’t be going beyond that for now. Fill in the blanks, cross the t’s, and dot the i’s as you please! I’m sure off-screen she does certain things that all teenagers do, but I won’t be writing them for this story while she is seventeen given the ratings and warnings I have chosen to go with. This is just me wanting to clarify something I have been asked many times. I hope that explains it for everyone!  <3

_* * *_

 

Sansa woke up in a daze of soft light filtering through the room, and after just a few slow blinks of her eyelids, the familiar walls of Sandor’s bedroom came into focus. Despite Sandor’s comforting arm around her middle and the warmth of his body pressed against her back, Sansa jolted upright in fear. If she had overslept, her parents would find her room empty and her presence lacking in the house, and they would know she had snuck out last night. She scrambled out of the bed, searching for her shoes around the foot of it before she noticed that her sandals from last night were still strapped on her feet. Her eyes went wide at the realization that she had never taken them off. Sansa felt a flush of heat rush to her cheeks.

 

When she stood up quickly beside the edge of his bed, Sandor was awake but groggy. He had also rolled onto his back. Her sudden movement, of course, must have woken him from his slumber. Currently, he was running his hand over his face. After one quick rub, Sandor removed his hand and turned his head to look across the room for her. When Sandor finally spotted her, he narrowed his eyes in confusion, but also because he probably hadn’t adjusted to the daylight yet.

 

“Where are you going in a hurry?” he asked her, and he must have forgotten all about her mother’s rules to be saying something like that.

 

“I have to get home,” Sansa said in a panicked voice, and she remembered Sandor’s clock on the dresser. Her eyes flitted towards it to catch the time. “It’s nine in the morning. I’ve got to go now, or we’ll be in trouble—”

 

“Fuck,” Sandor said suddenly, and he brought both of his hands to his face. After a short moment of stillness, he pulled his hands away and threw back the covers to get out of the bed. Sansa watched him go to the dresser to grab what she assumed was a pair of pants. While he was getting something to wear outside of his apartment, Sansa hurried to the bathroom down the hall to make sure she didn’t look like a right mess. Sadly, her hair was a mess. Sandor didn’t have a hair brush that Sansa had ever seen, and Sansa didn’t bring one with her. She tried combing her fingers through her hair to the best of her ability to smooth it out, and she washed her face really quick at his sink.

 

Once she was as satisfied as she was going to be with her appearance, she walked out of the hallway into his living room. Sandor was already waiting for her in a pair of pants, his t-shirt from last night, and shoes on his feet. He was sitting on the armrest of the chair, keys in his hand, and he lifted his eyebrows at the sight of her.

 

“Are you ready?” Sandor asked, and Sansa hastily nodded her head.

 

Sandor led the way down to his car, which was parked out on the curb of the apartment complex today. By the looks of it, he still wasn’t awake yet. Sansa thought about offering to drive. After all, she had her license. She just didn’t have her own vehicle because Mum and Dad were trying to put their three oldest boys through college. However, Jon had gotten into Blackcastle College on a scholarship, so Sansa wasn’t sure if he counted because of that. In the end she decided not to offer, though. It was Sandor’s vehicle, and he was going to have to drive back home on his own, anyway.

 

He pulled up to the end of the street, not risking the drive up to her house for obvious reasons, and Sansa leaned over to give him a quick kiss as usual before she darted out of his car, only barely remembering to shut the door behind herself, and ran down the sidewalk to her house. Sansa avoided the front door, cutting around the gate near the back. Unlatching the gate door took a moment because it liked to stick from time to time, but Sansa got it open. She hurried beyond it to the other side, shutting the gate and waiting for the sound of the latch catching in place, and then she ran to the back door. This was the part that was going to take more care on her behalf.

 

Sansa peeked into the kitchen windows to make sure no one was inside, and when she didn’t see anyone in the kitchen or the dining room beyond it, she took out her key and unlocked the door to sneak inside. She made sure to close the door as quietly as possible before stepping into the house. Everything was quiet. Almost too quiet, Sansa thought with a sinking feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach. Either she was lucky enough that Catelyn had woken up and gone to church with Rickon and Bran without bothering Sansa, or she was going to make it up to her room to find her mother sitting on her bed and waiting for her. Sansa prayed it was the former and not the latter. She didn’t know if she could handle facing her mother after breaking one of the very few rules Catelyn had asked of them.

 

Sansa crept through the house without seeing anyone or hearing anything. When she made it to her bedroom door, her heart was pounding loudly inside of her chest with fear. Some part of her didn’t want to turn the handle, but the silence made her think that perhaps her parents weren’t home. Obviously, Rickon and Bran weren’t home if it was this quiet, which led to the conclusion that her mother and father must have not been home either. The only opposite possible outcome to that was Catelyn had called the babysitter, Osha, to come and get her brothers for the day. Terrified of all the possibilities, Sansa almost thought of leaving the house and going over to Margaery’s as a cover up.

 

Her hand reached out for the handle, though. Slowly, Sansa turned it until she heard the familiar _click_ of her door opening up, and she pushed it inward.

 

Sansa was frozen at the doorway to her bedroom. There, sitting on her bed, was her mother. Catelyn’s palms were resting upon the mattress, and despite the situation, she looked very relaxed but firm in her expression and posture. She wasn’t on the verge of panic like most mothers might have been at their missing daughter, but Sansa figured, with another sinking feeling in her stomach, that it was because her mother knew where she had been last night.

 

At the sound of the door opening, Catelyn’s stern eyes rose to meet Sansa’s stunned gaze across the distance, narrowing at the sight of her daughter. She lifted her chin as she looked at Sansa. “I’ve been waiting for you,” Catelyn said calmly, and just then, another figure rounded into Sansa’s view from the left side of the room—her father, Ned. He didn’t look livid. It wasn’t like Sansa’s father to look livid, but it was evident that he had been pacing around her room. His hands were clenching into fists at his sides, the only thing aside from his eyes that gave away how he truly felt about this situation.

 

Sansa stared at her father, unable to tear her gaze away from him to bring it back to her mother. She knew she couldn’t lie her way out of this one. They would know it if she lied about where she had been last night, and then it would be ten times worse. She had to be honest with them, or it was going to blow up in her face and they would never trust her again, so Sansa steeled her nerves against the onslaught that she knew was going to come and faced it like an adult instead of like a teenager. Before either one of them could even question her about where she had been, Sansa decided to go ahead and tell them.

 

“I was at Sandor’s last night,” Sansa admitted with a steady voice. It didn’t even crack, which surprised Sansa.

 

Ned and Catelyn both were both visibly shocked at this admittance so quickly from Sansa, and the two of them glanced between each other as if trying to read the other’s face for how they should approach this next. They hadn’t expected her honesty, so they weren’t sure how to proceed. Sansa could tell as much from the looks on their faces. They had probably prepared for a whole fight and denial, but this was different because Sansa was calm and she wasn’t trying to hide anything from them.

 

Sansa looked at her mother. Catelyn was trying to piece together her next move, clearly thrown off guard by what had come out of Sansa’s mouth just moments ago. The bewilderment on her mother’s face might have been amusing to Sansa under different circumstances, but this was hardly the time to be amused by anything that came from either one of her parents. Sansa couldn’t bring herself to smile, let alone find any humor in the current state of affairs.

 

“Why?” Catelyn finally asked her, her tone taking on a harsher quality. “I had two rules, Sansa. _Two_ rules—”

 

“I wanted to see him,” Sansa answered, cutting off her mother. “Without having to worry about school the next morning.” She didn’t know where the strength was coming from to face this all so calmly, but her voice never lost its balance. “He works long hours on the weekends,” Sansa explained, looking between both of her parents, “and he works most weekdays in the evenings when I’m off from school, so finding time to see each other is hard—”

 

“And so you show up at his apartment in the middle of the night?” Ned asked Sansa, crossing his arms over his chest. Sansa turned to look at her father. His gaze was hard and unyielding, but he had never liked Sandor from the moment Catelyn had told him about Sansa seeing him. “ _This_ is how you spend time with him?”

 

“I don’t see how the hour matters,” Sansa said, shaking her head. She glanced back at her mother. “I’m not sleeping with him, so that can’t be why you’re upset. I already know I can come to you about those things, so I’m not going to hide them from you, Mum.”

 

“He’s an older man,” Ned told her. “He can take advantage of you—”

 

Sansa looked back at her father with exasperation on her features. “He’s not going to do that, Dad—”

 

“So, what?” Ned asked. “You just _completely_ trust him?”

 

“Yes!” Sansa exclaimed, finally raising her voice. Her admission shocked even her. While she had known some part of her trusted Sandor, she hadn’t known to what extent that trust for him went—not until now, at least. Sansa hadn’t taken the time to think about it, not really, but this sudden barrage from her father had just torn it out of her. Sandor had been patient with her, and kind. He had been understanding on so many occasions when he could have thought only of himself, and he respected her. He was gentle with her, even when she saw he wasn’t like that with other people. He actually cared about her feelings and insecurities, no matter how unreasonable some of them were, and he had told her he loved her and he hadn’t even gotten mad or upset with her when she didn’t say it back.

 

All of these thoughts flooding her head were beginning to make her bottom lip tremble despite her previous resolve. Ned’s face finally twisted with a cold anger, and he uncrossed his arms. “That’s it,” he said firmly. “You’re not going to see him anymore.”

 

Sansa felt her jaw fall open at her father’s words, but no immediate response could be conjured from her throat. Her voice had been temporarily stolen from her, and no words would come out of her mouth.

 

“Ned,” Catelyn said with caution, “let’s talk about this—”

 

“ _No_ ,” Ned replied tersely. “We don’t have to talk about this. Sansa is not seeing this man _anymore_. There are more suitable boys out there for her, boys like Joffrey—”

 

Sansa flinched at the name, and it caused a reaction out of her that she was not expecting in herself either, but the turmoil of emotions within were rising to the surface at her father’s declaration that she would not be seeing Sandor anymore. He couldn’t stop her. He could try all he wanted, but he couldn’t stop her from seeing Sandor. “Boys like Joffrey?” Sansa asked her father in a quiet voice, and it took her a moment to realize her voice was shaking. “You liked Joffrey, didn’t you? A perfect boy for me, wasn’t he?”

 

“Yes,” Ned told her, “he was a good boy—”

 

“A _good_ boy,” Sansa said, mocking her father, “who liked to _beat_ me and _slap_ me around and tell me how worthless I was despite the fact that he wouldn’t _leave_ me—” Her father’s figure became blurry to her, and when Sansa looked away from him, the whole room was blurry. She blinked her eyes, and hot tears splashed down her cheeks, sliding down to her chin. There was silence from both of her parents, but Sansa couldn’t see their faces because everything was hard to see. Sansa brought her hand to her mouth, covering it up as more tears slipped down her cheeks.

 

Her parents were speechless. Sansa wasn’t sure how long it went without them saying anything as they tried to process the information. It couldn’t have been easy. They had both thought for the longest time that Joffrey was a decent and honest boy, even though it was all just an act. For one brief and fearful moment, Sansa actually thought that neither one of them would believe her. She hadn’t spoken of it until now, so what if her parents thought she was just lying about it to make them look bad or to win an argument? Maybe they even thought she was just saying it for sympathy instead of for what it really was—disgust at the very idea that anyone could call Joffrey _good_ of all things. He was a monster, and Sansa would always believe that.

 

“When did this happen?” Ned asked, and his voice was softer than before. The anger had seemed to go out of him, replaced with surprise at what he had heard from her.

 

Sansa took a deep breath to calm her nerves. “Since almost the beginning,” she admitted below her breath, and she saw out of the corner of her eyes as her father brought his hand to his mouth. It fell away a moment later.

 

“Sansa, you saw him for over a year . . . ”

 

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Catelyn asked her, and she sounded hurt that Sansa had not shared this with them sooner.

 

“Because I didn’t think anyone would believe me,” Sansa whispered, unable to meet either one of her parents’ gazes, so she kept her head bowed and her eyes focused on the floor where it was safe to look.

 

“We’re your _parents_ ,” Ned told her. “We’ll always believe you—”

 

Sansa’s head finally shot up at that, and she aimed a steely gaze much like her mother’s onto him. “Like you believe me about Sandor?” she snapped, and she couldn’t stop more venomous words from coming forth from her lips. “He treats me like I ought to be treated, and you _hate_ him.”

 

“That’s,” Ned began, but he stumbled over his words, “that’s different. He’s too old for you, Sansa—”

 

“But it’s okay to date a boy my age who liked to _hit_ me?”

 

“No, Sansa, of course not—”

 

“Sandor doesn’t hit me,” Sansa continued on, her voice rising with each word. “He doesn’t try to make me do _anything_ for him. He likes me for who I am, and he treats me like a lady, and you hate him because of his age. You hate him because he lied to you one time, and I _asked_ him to do it because I knew you wouldn’t like it if you found out. He didn’t want to. He wanted to be honest with you, but he did it for _me_.” The last part was a lie, but it had just come pouring out with the rest of the words, and Sansa thought it would help shed some more positive light on his character. Sandor had lied without talking to her, but in a way, he had done it for her all the same. Maybe it counted in some way. “He cares about me,” Sansa finished in a softer voice, and she started to shake her head sadly. “He cares about me, and that doesn’t matter to you at all.”

 

Ned was speechless. He stared at Sansa, his face a blank slate, as he tried to find a response to that. When nothing came, Sansa nodded her head at his silence.

 

“That’s what I thought,” she said in a broken voice, and she turned away from her parents and hurried down the staircase into the living room. Sansa heard them calling out her name, heard their footsteps coming after her, but right now she didn’t want to be anywhere near them. She ran out of the front door and down the sidewalk until her lungs felt like they were going to burst inside of her chest from all of the exertion placed upon her limbs. When Sansa finally stopped to take good long look at her surroundings, she realized she had run herself all the way to Steel Street. Gendry lived here, and he was her friend, so she sought out his house on the block.

 

Gendry wasn’t outside anywhere that Sansa could see as she approached his home. He had one car parked in the garage, another parked on the driveway, and his usual ride parked over on the grass. There were some tools spread out across the pavement of the driveway, and his ramp was positioned right by the car parked there, but he wasn’t underneath any of the vehicles. Sansa bent over to look beneath them just in case, but she didn’t see Gendry, so she walked up to the front door and knocked a few times. It didn’t take long for someone to answer, and there on the other side was the last face that Sansa expected to see—her sister, Arya.

 

Arya grinned at the sight of Sansa at first, but then she noticed the tear streaks, the red face, and the solemn look on Sansa’s face, and the grin promptly faded to be replaced with a look of concern. “Are you all right?” Arya immediately asked, and Sansa was so grateful to have her as a sister that she cried fresh tears anew and threw her arms around Arya’s neck to embrace her. She threw Arya off balance with her sudden hug, and Arya nearly lost her footing, but she grabbed a hold of Sansa to steady herself. Surprisingly, there wasn’t a single complaint out of her about it.

 

“All right, now you’ve got me worried,” Arya said, still returning Sansa’s hug. “Who died, got beheaded, or came to an untimely end on a Stairmaster?”

 

Sansa laughed for the first time since she had left Sandor’s company last night and pulled away from Arya. “Nobody,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “I just didn’t get home on time. Mum and Dad caught me, and we had a big row.”

 

“Uh oh,” Arya agreed, frowning. “They must have poked at your bed.”

 

“I only showed up a little after nine,” Sansa told her. “It might have worked had I not slept so late.”

 

“Next time,” Arya suggested with a nod, “set an alarm.”

 

Sansa laughed again. “Right,” she said, and she looked into Gendry’s house past Arya’s head. “Is Gendry here?” Sansa asked, even though she knew he was more than likely lurking somewhere about if Arya was here at his house.

 

“Oh, yeah,” Arya said, opening the door wider to let Sansa come in. “He’s in the kitchen, cooking.”

 

Sansa aimed a shocked gaze at Arya as she stepped past the threshold into the opening hallway. Gendry’s house was shaped a little funny with the front door leading immediately to a hallway that dispersed into separate rooms. At the very end of the hall was the kitchen and dining room on the left and the living room on the right. Arya closed the door behind Sansa, enclosing them temporarily in darkness.

 

“Gendry cooks?” Sansa asked, genuinely surprised to hear this. She had never known that Gendry cooked before. Then again, she had never stayed over for supper at his house either.

 

“Well, he cooks better than _me_ ,” Arya said. “My food is poisonous. You don’t want to eat that.” Arya started walking down the hallway towards the kitchen, but Sansa stopped her with her hand on Arya’s arm.

 

“Arya,” Sansa began quietly, “can we . . . talk somewhere private?”

 

Arya looked a little perplexed, but she shrugged her shoulders. “All right,” she said, and she led the way to one of the rooms on the left side of the house. Its walls were dark blue, and the bed within it was a king mattress with white sheets and a blue and black coverlet set. There were two dressers, one of them open with clothes spilling out of it, some shoes strewn about, and posters on the walls. Sansa knew it was Gendry’s bedroom. She had seen it a few times, though she had never spent any time inside of it. Normally, when she had come over to Gendry’s to hang out with him and Arya, they spent time in the front yard, back yard, or the living room.

 

Her sister led the way to the bed, where she sat down cross-legged on the edge. Arya waited for Sansa to take a seat as well, and when Sansa had seated herself down, Arya steepled her hands together and glanced over them pointedly in a comical manner. “You have questions, young grasshopper?” Arya asked her with an over-the-top fake accent. Sansa gave Arya a look, and Arya dropped the steepled hands and the fake accent. “Okay, serious discussion,” Arya said. “I can take it. Hit me.”

 

Sansa thought about everything that had gone through her mind earlier when she told her father that she trusted Sandor completely, and she wondered at how she hadn’t realized such an important thing until just that moment. Sansa had always thought it was something you would realize around the person you felt that way about first, and then you would tell them, which would have been the proper order in her mind. Instead, Sansa didn’t realize it until her father had pushed it out of her. In her frustration she found the answer. She trusted Sandor, of course, more than she believed she had originally, but did those feelings of trust go further than just simply feeling safe and protected in his presence? Sansa had never been in love before, so she wasn’t sure how it was supposed to feel, but she was beginning to wonder just how deep her feelings for Sandor went and if it was beyond mere trust alone. All she could think to do was to turn to Arya and ask her, “Do you love Gendry?”

 

Arya looked taken aback by the question. She stared at Sansa for a moment, appearing to be torn between making a joke and being serious. Thankfully, Arya settled for being serious. “Yeah, I love him,” she said in all honesty, but Arya seemed to realize where this was going. “But this isn’t about me and Gendry, is it?” she asked, raising her eyebrows at Sansa.

 

Sansa ignored Arya’s question for another one of her own, though. She turned on the bed to face Arya fully, pulling her leg up by bending it at the knee. Sansa wrapped one of her arms around her leg and hugged it to her chest. “How did you know?” Sansa asked her. “How did you know you loved him?”

 

Arya remained quiet as she mulled over her thoughts. “Well,” she said, “we weren’t dating at the time. I had just broken up with Jaqen, and Gendry was still seeing Melly. I was ridiculously jealous of her. Like, she wasn’t a bad person, but she was with the person _I_ wanted to be with, so I hated her. Anyway, me and Gendry were hanging out because we were friends at the time, but we had got into a huge row over her. I just blurted it out. I didn’t even know I felt that way, to be honest. It just came out in the middle of all our shouting, and he looked so stunned over it. He didn’t say anything. He just grabbed me and kissed me, and before I knew it, we were making out on his couch. The next day he broke up with Melly, and . . . we were together.”

 

Sansa had never heard the full story before. She knew Arya and Gendry had had a fight during that time, and she had known Gendry had been dating Melly, but that was about as far as her knowledge had gone until now. It didn’t really answer her question, though. According to Arya’s story, she had no clue how she felt about Gendry until the words just came out of her mouth.

 

“So,” Sansa began slowly, “you didn’t know?”

 

“I think I knew, like, deep down,” Arya said, “but I never really put thought into it, and it took a fight for me to admit it. I’m very stubborn, but you know that.”

 

“Yeah,” Sansa agreed in a soft voice. “And Gendry didn’t say it back?”

 

“Not right away,” Arya admitted. “He did later, though.”

 

“Him not saying it back didn’t bother you?”

 

Arya shrugged her shoulders. “Not really. I mean, I could tell he cared about me, so I didn’t think too hard about the words. Actions matter more, right?”

 

Sansa leaned a little closer to her sister, lowering her voice to a whisper. Why, she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like she cared if Gendry walked by and overheard them. Gendry was practically like a brother to Sansa, and even more than that, he was a friend, too. “What does it feel like?” Sansa asked Arya, wondering if maybe Arya could shed some light on it for her to help her understand it a bit better.

 

Arya screwed up her face in concentration, making about three or four different funny looks before finally sighing and relaxing her face. “Well, I don’t know how to describe it. It doesn’t feel like anything in particular.” Arya gave a sideways glance at Sansa all of a sudden, though, narrowing her eyes. “Are you in love with Sandor?” Arya blurted out.

 

Sansa’s mouth fell open. “I don’t know . . . ”

 

Arya frowned softly at her. “If you have to think about it, then no,” Arya said in a kind voice. She shrugged her shoulders again. “You shouldn’t have to think about it. At least, I didn’t have to think about it. It’s feelings, not thoughts. You don’t think about it, Sansa. You just feel it. If you don’t _feel_ it, then it’s probably not there.”

 

“What if it’s there, but you don’t know how to recognize it?” Sansa asked her, thinking that was a valid possibility.

 

“I don’t know,” Arya said, tilting her head to the side. “I’ve never loved anyone but Gendry. I’m not a master at it.” Arya held up her hand, ticking off the things she was good at for Sansa’s personal benefit as she glanced up sideways at the ceiling. “I’m a master assassin, video game connoisseur, and deliverer of snide commentary, but that’s about it.” She looked down at Sansa again, raising her eyebrows. “Come to me about either one of those things, and we’re golden.”

 

Sansa felt a laugh bubbling up in her throat. “Okay, I’ll keep that in mind.”

 

Arya grinned at her. “So,” she drawled out, leaning on her left arm with her palm on the mattress, “what happened last night?”

 

Sansa wasn’t sure at first if she should tell Arya those things, but Arya had never betrayed her confidence in the past, so Sansa shared last night’s events with Arya. Arya’s eyes, by the end of it, were bulging in their sockets. She never once cut Sansa off, though, saying it was too much information. Once Sansa was finished telling everything that happened between her and Sandor to Arya, Arya clapped her hands over her mouth as a sudden squeak erupted from the back of her throat.

 

“ _Oh-mi-god_ ,” Arya said quickly, dropping her hands from her mouth and leaning towards Sansa, “are you _serious_? Did he really?”

 

“Did he what?” Sansa asked slowly, not sure which thing Arya was referring to with that.

 

Arya bit back a grin, pointing down at her crotch. “Did he,” she said, her voice unnaturally high with amusement, “in his pants?”

 

Sansa felt a flush creep onto her cheeks. “Yes, he did . . . ”

 

Arya slapped her legs a couple of times, holding back a laugh. “Oh my god, I can’t believe it! It’s too funny! Oh my god, just wait ‘til I see him again!”

 

“Arya, no!” Sansa protested, touching her sister’s arm. “You can’t tell him I told you!”

 

Arya looked crestfallen. “Why not?”

 

“Because!” Sansa exclaimed. “It’s personal!”

 

“Oh, _please_ , you’ve got to let me _tease_ him—”

 

“ _No_ ,” Sansa said firmly. “No teasing. No telling. It’s personal. He might get mad if I told you. Besides, I wouldn’t want him sharing things about me with other guys . . . ”

 

“I’m your sister,” Arya said pointedly. “It’s different.”

 

“Still, please,” Sansa pleaded with her. “Don’t say anything.”

 

Arya sighed deeply, rolling her eyes towards the ceiling. “Oh, all right,” she agreed. “I won’t tell him.”

 

“Thank you,” Sansa said softly, smiling at Arya.

 

Arya pointed her finger at Sansa, though. “But you’ve got to stay for breakfast and eat with us if you expect me not to tell him,” she said. Arya then hopped off the bed and headed towards the doorway. “Come on!” she called out, turning back to look at Sansa near the door to Gendry’s room. “I promise he’s at least a _somewhat_ decent cook.”

 

Sansa smiled at Arya’s vague reassurances, pushed herself off the bed, and walked down the hall with Arya to join her in the dining room as they waited on Gendry to finish cooking. They sat down at the table and talked further. Arya explained to Sansa that their parents thought Arya had gone over to a friend’s house to go to church together instead of her going with Mum and Rickon, and Sansa mentioned more things to her sister about the course of her and Sandor’s relationship. It was nice to share it with Arya, but soon her thoughts drifted away from those things and towards food. The delicious scent of whatever Gendry was cooking wafted through the house, and if the smell of the food was anything to go by, then Gendry was more than just a _somewhat_ decent cook. It smelled like a world-class chef was in Gendry’s kitchen.

 

Though the idle chatter and delicious food distracted Sansa temporarily, she knew when she got home she would have to face her parents again, and it wasn’t going to be easy. With the way she had run out of the house, they probably were even madder at her than before. Sansa was less than three months from being eighteen, an adult by all legal standards, and by then she could do whatever she wanted to do, whether they liked it or not. The fact that her father was fighting her so hard in regards to Sandor didn’t make any sense to her either. If her father had actually bothered to take the time to get to know Sandor, he might have finally understood why Sansa was with him. Ned didn’t understand, though, and he didn’t seem to want to make the slightest effort on Sansa’s behalf to do so. It would have made her so happy, too, if he did, but she doubted she would ever get that from her father.

 

As a result of all of her tumultuous thoughts, and despite the feeling of gaiety and laughter in Gendry’s home, Sansa couldn’t erase the uneasy fluttering of her heart.

 

 


	51. The Season’s Ripe for Change

_* * *_

 

“Put that on,” Sarella said to him, throwing a green scrub hat into his lap from the driver side of the vehicle. Sandor looked down at the hat and picked it up, turning it over in his hands. He glanced over at her, raising his brow, and held the scrub cap higher.

 

“You expect me to put this on?” he asked her, and Sarella cut him a dark look.

 

“You’ll put it on if you don’t want anyone recognizing that pretty face of yours,” she responded with a sarcastic tone. As she said this, she was fitting a blue scrub hat around her head, tying it in the back with a fastened knot.

 

“What do you think this is for?” Sandor shot back, pulling up the surgical mask around the lower half of his face. It was large and it fit nicely in place, hiding the majority of his scars from sight. When he spoke again, his voice was muffled behind it. “This covers my face. That thing is just going to cover my hair.”

 

“You want to look authentic, don’t you?” Sarella threw back in challenge, and she pulled her surgical mask over the lower half of her face as well. “Because I would hate to get back and tell Renly we failed at the fucking job because _you_ wouldn’t put on a hat,” she said through the mask.

 

Sandor clenched his jaw tight and tied the scrub hat around his head. Sarella was in the middle of putting on a pair of disposable gloves. Sandor had to search around in the bag for a larger size to fit his hands. Once he found a pair that looked sizable enough, he grabbed them and pulled them onto his hands. Sandor looked up through the windshield of the car at the large structure ahead of them. The two of them were sitting in the parking lot at Trident Regional Medical Center in a borrowed vehicle, which had been safer than using their own personal vehicles, dressed in scrubs with fake badges pinned to their shirts. Sandor and Sarella had the whole nine yards of what it took to pass for doctors in this joint.

 

As Sandor stared forward at the hospital, he hoped this plan went as smoothly as they had discussed prior to actually engaging in it. The execution was going to be harder to pull off than the planning. After all, Sarella didn’t know this place like Sandor knew it. He hated it, but he knew the hospital like the back of his hand, and not simply from what felt like hundreds of visits to it as a child. Sandor had done work for Renly previously in the hospital. Usually, it had involved stealing private medical records for blackmail purposes. Renly had a lot of dirt on a lot of people. The only people he didn’t have dirt on yet were the Lannisters, which was the whole reason why they were here today right now.

 

The idea was that Sandor and Sarella were to retrieve the actual files, if they could even find them in time, while Tyene snuck in from a different angle and temporarily shut down the camera security on the floor that held the files they were seeking. They didn’t want footage of Sarella and Sandor walking in and out of the room where the files went missing, after all. It wasn’t as if Trident Regional Medical Center had high tech security or a bunch of guards on duty, but they did have security all the same, and Sandor’s move was to avoid getting caught. While the two of them were entering together, they would be leaving separately through different exits to avoid suspicion. Tyene would be leaving separately from them as well.

 

They would have an estimated ten minutes to retrieve the files from the moment Tyene shut down the cameras. Ten minutes was about how long it would take for maintenance to notice the outage and come to fix it. Tyene said it could be as long as fifteen minutes, but it would be a risk to stretch it out. Ten minutes was the optimal window, and Sandor had discussed with Sarella that if they hadn’t found the files within ten minutes, then they were getting the fuck out of there. He wasn’t going to risk it. He only hoped Sarella wasn’t stupid enough to risk it and insist on lingering despite her initial agreement that staying beyond the ten minute timeframe was a dangerous idea.

 

The signal for the cameras being shut down was a pager in Sarella’s pocket. Phones might not work within the hospital, so Sarella and Tyene had agreed on pagers. The moment Tyene had successfully shut the cameras down, she would page Sarella. First, though, they had to get inside of the hospital and get close to the floor in question. After that, they just had to wait for the signal.

 

“Ready?” Sarella asked from the driver seat, and Sandor glanced over at her.

 

He was as ready as he would ever be for this.

 

Sandor nodded his head, and the two of them exited the vehicle. The doors shut behind them with two resounding thuds, and they joined each other side by side as they walked towards the entryway of the hospital. Sarella was much shorter than Sandor, standing about the same height as Arya. Sandor narrowed his eyes at the thought, and then he shook his head. He wasn’t sure what made him think of that comparison. He glanced down at Sarella to his left. Hanging across her shoulders was the black strap to an empty messenger bag meant for holding the files they obtained from the hospital. They had needed something to smuggle them out in, and Sandor refused to be the one holding the goods, so it was left to Sarella to carry the bag.

 

They walked through the sliding doors, and Sandor was immediately struck by the freezing air within the main entryway. It was always as cold as hell inside of this place. The cold was supposed to fight off germs and bacterial growth or something like that from what he had heard, but that didn’t make him dislike it any less. Sandor passed by a desk to his right that was located within a niche in the wall, and he waved at the security guard sitting there behind a computer. It was a chubby man, hardly any muscle on him, with short cropped dark hair and a closely trimmed beard and mustache. The security guard waved back, and Sarella tipped her head at him as she passed by.

 

“How’s it going today?” Sandor called out, just for shits and giggles, but Sarella cut him another one of her dark looks for speaking out. The security guard, however, laughed in response.

 

“What do you think?” the guard shot back, amused. “Boring as hell, and the food sucks.”

 

“You should hit that place over on Red Harbor Road,” Sandor suggested, jutting his thumb over his shoulder as if to indicate where it was located. “It’s not even three minutes away. Serves some good Ironborn cuisine. Pyke’s Seafood is the name of it, I think.”

 

“Sure, I’ll try it out on my break,” the guard said, and Sandor kept walking down the hallway ahead of them. The lights faded out into a softer hue, dim and relaxing instead of bright and harsh, and the walls were painted a dark beige color. The black floor tiles glistened beneath their feet, each tile traced with white along the edges where they connected with each other. Halfway down the walls, there was a single cream colored panel running horizontally, and below that, wallpaper made up of swirls of green, beige, and burgundy. They passed by some matching burgundy furniture and elegant dark wood end tables, all of which looked like they were be more in place in a manor house than a hospital.

 

“What was that about?” Sarella asked him under her breath when they were out of earshot, and Sandor wished the woman would just relax.

 

“Fitting in,” Sandor replied dryly. “You should try it. It works better than being uptight.”

 

“I’m not uptight.”

 

“Didn’t say you were,” he said, turning his head to look at a particularly large painting that hung on the wall to his left. It depicted a green lush landscape with a little cottage in the distance. As Sandor looked forward again, he wondered why there were so many damn paintings out there of country landscapes with fucking cottages. They turned around a corner to the right, walking a bit further until they reached a set of elevators. Sarella walked up to them first, pressing the up button.

 

She was staring at him with a ‘go to hell’ look in her eyes. Sandor didn’t even have to see the rest of her face underneath that surgical mask to know the expression. Both of them were silent as the elevator door opened up, and three people spilled out of it. Sandor and Sarella walked in together, and Sarella hit the button for the third floor. It was pure silence on the way up, too. Sandor didn’t mind it, though. He wanted to get this over with as soon as possible, and he wasn’t interested in idle chitchat along the way. When the elevator stopped and opened on their floor, the two of them stepped out with Sarella leading the way. Sandor was two steps behind her.

 

The hallways on this level had walls of lighter beige paint that was almost pink in color, and the floors were lined with white tiles that shone brightly from fresh buffing. The lights were brighter here as well, nowhere near as dark as they were in that first hallway. There weren’t many people on this level. Most of the time, they encountered nobody as they went down the hallways. They reached an area that was completely empty after a few twists and turns. Ahead of them, rows of doors stood out on either side with little numerical and alphabetical signs. They avoided that way, turning instead to the left to continue walking.

 

“She hasn’t paged me yet,” Sarella said below her breath, though loud enough for Sandor to hear.

 

“We’ll circle back around,” he told her. “For now, let’s keep walking.”

 

Standing still in full work-related gear would look abnormal, so they continued to walk the floor, never straying too far from the hallway that was their final destination. Two doctors walking around wouldn’t attract the attention of anybody in a hospital. They just had to keep looking busy or rushed, and everything would be fine. Sandor wasn’t sure how many minutes it was that they walked the halls aimlessly until a familiar _beep_ echoed out from Sarella’s pocket.

 

Sarella kept walking as she checked her pager. “Let’s go,” she said, and she tucked the pager away into its pocket again. They weren’t far from the hallway, and they quickened their pace to get to it.

 

Once they reached the hallway, Sandor asked without stopping, “Which room?”

 

“AF36,” Sarella reminded him, and they followed the letters and numbers until they found it about a quarter ways down the hall. Sarella immediately tried the door handle. “ _Shit_ ,” she swore under her breath. “It’s locked.”

 

“Keep watch,” Sandor told her, and he pulled out of his pocket just what he needed to pick the lock. He had done this a million times, and still they hadn’t changed the security in this place. The door was open in less than ten seconds, and Sandor easily turned the handle to step inside. Sarella quickly followed him after checking their surroundings, and she closed the door behind herself.

 

“How did you do that?” she asked, immediately looking at the boxes and filing cabinets before them. “Oh god, nine minutes for _this_?”

 

There was no way she would have been able to do this on her own or with that sister of hers. Then again, no one knew this hospital like Sandor. He ignored her first question and answered her second one. “They’re organized alphabetically by surname. You look for ‘L,’ and I’ll look for ‘B.’”

 

He found ‘B’ in less than a minute. Baratheon should have been near the front, and it was, but there were a whole slew of first names. _Joffrey, Myrcella, Tommen_ , Sandor thought, reciting the names in his head. He found a thick stash on Joffrey. Not knowing which ones were needed, Sandor decided to grab the whole thing. They didn’t have time to search through it. Myrcella and Tommen’s files in this room were a lot smaller than their brother’s. All of it was blood work.

 

“Did you find it?” Sandor asked, turning around to look for Sarella. He crossed the distance, checked the time on the small watch in his pocket. “Two minutes, Sarella, come on,” he urged quickly.

 

“I’ve got it,” Sarella said, lifting a stash of files. Sandor leaned over to check the name on them, and he saw _Jaime Lannister_ written on the tab of the top folder. Sarella dropped them into her bag along with the ones Sandor handed her. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, and they headed back for the door.

 

The hallway beyond the file room was clear, and they headed off in the same direction together at first. This time, though, they took separate elevators. Sandor’s elevator was empty, and he stared at the little indicator lights until it stopped on the first floor. The elevator halted, its door slowly pulling open. Sandor walked out past a group of people waiting to get inside of it, and he pulled off his gloves as he headed down the hallway. Sandor dropped them into the first wastebasket he found in his path, and then he made his way through the familiar hallways to a different exit than the one he came in through. Considering the short amount of time he was here, it was no good to have the same group of people seeing him a second time.

 

Sandor left on the surgical mask and the scrub hat even once he was past the doors of the hospital. He navigated his way through the parking lot, feeling more and more nervous with each step, until he reached the car they had used to get here. Sarella was already sitting inside in the driver’s seat, her surgical mask lowered to her neck, but the scrub hat still tied around her head. She cranked the car at the sight of him, pulled on her seatbelt, and finally tore the hat off of her head. Sandor got in on the passenger side, shutting the door behind himself. He buckled up, too, just to avoid giving any coppers a reason to pull them over.

 

He tore the mask and scrub hat off, dropping them into the floorboard. They drove in silence, and Sandor looked down at the messenger bag near his feet. She had placed it in the floorboard on his side of the car. Sandor’s hands itched to look through the files, but then he decided it was better left in the hands of someone else. Once they reached the empty building of Renly’s nightclub on Blackfyre Boulevard, Sarella pulled the vehicle into the back out of sight. There was a solid gate around the back area. Right now, the gate was open to allow for their entrance.

 

They both got out of the car. Sandor had simple clothes under the scrubs, so he tore off the loose green scrub shirt and threw it into the floorboard of the car, and then he shucked off the bottoms and dropped those in the car as well. He was left in a t-shirt and jeans. On the other side of the vehicle, Sarella did the same thing as him. She had worn a basic outfit underneath her scrubs as well. Now that they were in their normal clothes, Sandor grabbed the messenger bag and shut the door to the car. He led the way this time with Sarella following behind him.

 

It was daytime, so no one was here. No patrons, anyway. The door was opened by one of Renly’s guards, who led them into the darkened club. There were a few lights to guide the way, but not very many. They made it to Renly’s office, and the guard who led them there opened the door for them. Sandor stepped through with Sarella on his heels. Inside of the office was Renly, Loras, Oberyn, Oberyn’s other daughters, and a few more guards. Sandor imagined Renly wanted them inside the room this time instead of outside of it to guard the door.

 

Sandor walked right up to Renly’s desk and dropped the messenger bag on top of it.

 

Renly didn’t crack his usual smile. Instead, his eyes had followed the bag as Sandor dropped it onto his desk. He then lifted them slowly to Sandor. “Thank you, Sandor, for your work here today,” Renly told him with a straight face. “I’m sure we’ll get much accomplished with the information in this bag.”

 

“Aren’t you going to check it first?” Sandor asked.

 

Renly lightly pulled upward at the strap. “Well, it feels like you grabbed plenty,” Renly commented in an idle voice. He opened the bag, though, and began checking the file folders within it. Everyone waited in silence as Renly pored over the documents in what felt like a long and boring stretch of time. Slowly, the look of boredom on Renly’s face took on an ethereal glow of happiness. It was eerie, how peaceful he appeared after his eyes had roved over those documents. “This is just what I needed, Sandor. Thank you,” Renly repeated, but his voice was more agreeable than before.

 

“Are we doing the precinct next?” Oberyn asked.

 

“Yes,” Renly said. “The precinct is next. That one is for you and your daughters. Sandor will have to sit it out.”

 

“Understandable,” Oberyn agreed with him, glancing over at Sandor. “A man with a popular face will not go unnoticed.”

 

Sandor looked around the group while they were talking, and he noticed suddenly that Tyene was missing. “Where is Tyene?” he asked, his voice on edge.

 

“She is on her way,” Oberyn said. “Nothing to worry about.”

 

As long as she hadn’t gotten stopped or caught by anyone, then Sandor was all right. However, it didn’t stop the uneasy feeling he got from it. He and Sarella had driven the speed limit from the same distance as Tyene unless she took a different route to the club. There was no reason why she shouldn’t be here at the same time as them. Traffic, maybe, but there wasn’t much traffic out there at this time of day.

 

“I think we can say we have been fairly successful in causing trouble, but if we really want to shake the Lannister foundations in this town, we’ll need those files at the precinct,” Renly told all of them. He glanced over at Sandor. “Your part is done for now until we get everything together. I’ll need you again after that. Until then, you may go.”

 

Sandor stared back at Renly. In the silence no one else said anything, and Sandor wondered if Renly just didn’t want Sandor to even have knowledge of the precinct plan. Sandor didn’t have much time to think about it, though, because frankly, he could have given two shits less about how that plan was going to go down. Slowly, he nodded his head in acceptance. “All right,” Sandor said, glancing away from Renly to look at Oberyn, Obara, Nymeria, and Sarella. “I’ll be going, then.”

 

Turning away from them all, Sandor made his way out of Renly’s office. Halfway down the hallway, he heard footsteps following him. Sandor turned around to look at whoever was on his heels. It was Sarella. She had stopped when he turned around to face her, and she held up her chin. “I wanted to say it was good working with you, Sandor,” Sarella told him, and she walked a few more feet until she could extend her hand for a handshake.

 

Sandor glanced down at her hand, and then his eyes drifted back up to her face. After a moment’s consideration, he shook her hand. “Good working with you, too,” he said gruffly, and when they dropped hands, he tilted his head at her with a silent farewell before turning back around and leaving Renly’s nightclub.

 

Once he was outside of the backdoor that he and Sarella had entered through, Sandor squinted against the bright sunlight outside. It was a big difference to the wash of darkness within the club’s walls, and Sandor had to give himself a moment to adjust to it before he began walking again. He walked around the gate of Maegor’s Holdfast and through the parking lot beyond it. Sandor had chosen not to park his car at Renly’s nightclub for numerous reasons, having walked here after parking it some distance away, which meant he was in for a bit of a walk.

 

Even though he was alone with his thoughts, Sandor’s mind was uncommonly blank. The drive back to his apartment felt as if it didn’t take as long as the walk back to his car, and then he had to get ready for work. He was coming in on a later shift to close tonight, and right now, he was just going through the motions. Sandor left his apartment, locked the door, and went back down to his car to drive to the pub. The parking lot at the pub had a few stray cars, but not very many. People usually came when the sun went down. It was afternoon, so things would be slow.

 

Sandor saw Asha and Allard at work on the floor, and the first thing he did was head to the stockroom to prepare the floor for tonight. Eventually, the sun went down and the customers came in, and Sandor did his job as usual at the bar. They had a lot of regulars tonight, but there were some new faces as well. Sandor glanced up during his work, his eyes catching sight of something beyond the row of windows beside the door. A police vehicle had pulled up into the parking lot, and Sandor froze at the counter as he stared out at it.

 

“What is it, boss?” Asha asked, having come up beside him.

 

“Fucking look,” he snapped, though not at her, and his hand gestured toward the window. Asha turned to take a good look, her eyes narrowing at the sight of the police car.

 

“What the fuck?” she said. “We haven’t had any disturbances.”

 

Sandor watched the car, waiting to see who would get out of it. When the door finally opened, it wasn’t Officer Jaime Lannister, but his partner and girlfriend Officer Brienne Tarth. Despite having formed something of a friendship with her at the camp over summer, Sandor wasn’t sure what brought her here in uniform on this evening. He remained on edge the entire time she took to walk from her vehicle to the bar inside of his establishment, but Brienne smiled at the sight of Sandor instead of looking like a woman ready to make an arrest. She took a seat on one of the stools at the bar, and then she rested her hands on the countertop.

 

“How’s it going tonight?” Brienne asked them both, looking between Sandor and Asha as if she was just striking up idle conversation. Sandor didn’t let down his guard, but he allowed himself to loosen up a little.

 

“It’s going good,” he told her. “What brings you up here?”

 

Brienne shrugged at his question. “Nothing,” she admitted in all honesty. “I’m just making rounds tonight, keeping an eye on things, and so far it’s been pretty boring.”

 

“You should have a drink with us,” Asha suggested, smirking, but Brienne laughed and shook her head.

 

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Brienne said. “No drinking on the job,” she added, giving Sandor and Asha pointed looks.

 

“Well, you’ve come to the wrong place if you can’t drink on the job,” Sandor said, making a light-hearted joke. He gestured around the pub with his hand. “That’s all we do here.”

 

“Well, then,” Brienne said, clearly joking right back with him, and she made a motion like she was reaching for her wallet, “let me just get my wallet . . . ”

 

All three of them laughed at that, and Asha excused herself to go serve a patron, leaving Sandor alone with Brienne at the bar. He felt guilty, pretending to be this nice person to Brienne after what he had just done today. Lannister was a prick, and Sandor wanted to believe the asshole deserved everything he had coming to him, but Brienne was with Lannister. The whole job with Renly was going to blow up on her, too. All of a sudden, Sandor was afraid it might cost Brienne her career as well. Could they tie Lannister’s dirty deeds to Brienne somehow, claiming she was involved because she was involved with him? She was Jaime Lannister’s partner, and there was every chance it could hurt her, too.

 

Sandor resolved that he would have to have a talk with Renly to make sure they didn’t drag Brienne into this mess with Lannister’s career. There was no way she had been involved in any of that. Brienne was a clean-cut officer who followed the rules to a tee, and Sandor didn’t want to see her lose her job and reputation over her fucking prick of a boyfriend. Sandor didn’t even understand why she was with him in the first place. Brienne and Lannister were polar opposites from each other, and their relationship made no fucking sense to Sandor.

 

“You ought to break up with that prick of a boyfriend you’ve got,” Sandor suggested out loud to her, just because he was thinking it. Besides, the less involvement Brienne had with Lannister, the less likely they would pull her into Lannister’s mess. That was Sandor’s reasoning, anyway.

 

Brienne, however, gave Sandor a strange look. She narrowed her eyes, leaning away from the countertop a little bit. “What?” she asked, sounding completely caught off guard by his suggestion.

 

“Your boyfriend?” Sandor repeated, raising his brow. “Lannister? You ought to ditch that fucker.”

 

Brienne’s strange expression stayed steady on her face. It almost looked like she was horrified by his suggestion. Sandor expected her to laugh at it or something like that, not look like she couldn’t make sense of it. When she spoke, though, it ruined all doubt of what she was thinking.

 

“You’re not hitting on me, are you?” Brienne asked, and if Sandor had been drinking something, he would have spewed it all over the counter.

 

“Fuck, _no_ ,” Sandor said quickly, and he shook his head as well as waved his hands back and forth. “No,” he repeated. “Just no. I’ve got a girlfriend already.”

 

Brienne looked skeptical of this. “I thought you were single,” she said.

 

Sandor cursed inwardly. He had told Brienne he was single because he didn’t think it was such a good idea to mention he wasn’t in case she ever made inquiries about it. “We started seeing each other recently,” he told her, trying to cover his tracks as best as he could in the moment.

 

“What’s her name?” Brienne asked, suddenly more chipper again.

 

 _Fuck_ , Sandor thought. She wanted a name, and he couldn’t very well say Sansa. He also couldn’t keep her waiting, or Brienne would know he was lying, so Sandor’s tongue latched onto the first name that came to his mind to fill in the story.

 

“Sarella,” he blurted out. God, he hoped she never repeated that to anyone.

 

“That’s a pretty name,” Brienne said to him, raising her eyebrows. “She must be a pretty girl.”

 

“Yeah,” he agreed with her, “she’s nice.”

 

Brienne seemed to have forgotten all about his suggestion, but she also looked like she had somewhere she needed to be. “Well, I think I’ve lingered long enough,” she told Sandor, patting her hand down on the counter. Brienne flashed a smile at him. “It was nice seeing you, though. Take care, Sandor.”

 

“Yeah,” Sandor said, “you too.”

 

He watched as Brienne got up from the stool and made her way out of his pub. She lingered beside the open door of her car for a moment before getting inside. When she pulled the vehicle out of its parking space, Sandor finally tore his gaze away and focused back on his job. The last thing he needed to be thinking about right now were the consequences of his actions and who they might affect in the long run. He needed to focus on doing his job, and that was it.

 

As the night wore on, though, Sandor couldn’t stop thinking about it. When he had managed to fuck up three drinks in a row, he finally took a break and got Asha and Allard to watch the floor while he went outside for a breather. Sandor walked straight through the crowd and out into the open air beyond his pub as he pushed past the front door. The chilly night air hit him in the face, and he took a deep breath of it to fill his lungs. Tonight was not going as planned. He was supposed to do the job for Renly today, and then go back to work like nothing had happened, and yet he couldn’t stop acting like _something_ had happened.

 

It shouldn’t have been bothering him this much. He had done things like this a million times before. How was today any different? It shouldn’t have been any different. Sandor knew it. He knew it in his bones, but he didn’t feel it. He didn’t feel it, and that was the problem.

 

“You look like you need a smoke,” a sly voice offered to his left.

 

Sandor turned at the sound of the voice. It had come from a small statured man in a pair of dark burgundy slacks and a matching suit jacket with only one button done. He wore a dark grey shirt underneath the jacket, but there was no tie. The man pushed himself off the wall of Sandor’s pub and approached him. He had been smoking a cigarette, which he was now holding in his right hand as he went for his pocket and removed a pack of cigarettes. He held it out to Sandor, offering him one with a single raised eyebrow.

 

Sandor wasn’t a smoker, but it was better than grabbing for a bottle. He reached out and accepted one from the pack, and the man smirked softly at him. The guy had brown hair streaked with grey on the sides and a closely trimmed goatee and mustache. His eyes glinted in the lamplight outside of the pub. Sandor watched as the man pulled out a lighter, flicking it on and holding it up to Sandor’s cigarette. Sandor lit the cigarette, taking a puff on it, and the guy withdrew the lighter to tuck it back into his pocket.

 

“Rough night?” the man asked him, sounding almost bored and yet somewhat interested at the same time.

 

The cigarette didn’t taste funny or bad. It had a slow menthol taste that lingered on the back of Sandor’s tongue, and something about it was relaxing.

 

“You could say that,” Sandor said absently.

 

“Well, don’t let it get you down,” the man said, glancing over at him. “We all get back up again.” The man smiled somewhat again, and he tilted his head at Sandor. “Have a good night,” he offered next, turning around to leave.

 

“Thanks for the cigarette, uh . . . ” Sandor called out, drawling out the end of his sentence because he didn’t know the guy’s name to properly thank him. The man stopped walking to look back at him, and his eyes glinted against the darkness.

 

“Petyr,” the man said, and he smirked again, tilting his head in another farewell. “And you’re welcome,” Petyr then added, and there was something about his tone that almost spoke of amusement. Sandor watched as the man turned around once more, heading off towards his car in the parking lot. Sandor didn’t even remember seeing him inside of the pub, and he frowned to himself at that thought.

 

However, Sandor didn’t linger on the thought. He put out the cigarette in his hand, and then he walked back inside to get back to work.

 

 


	52. If You Let Me, Here’s What I’ll Do

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** At the end of this chapter, I’ve included a list of songs so far whose lyrics inspired the chapter names, covering Chapter 43 through Chapter 52!

_* * *_

 

Returning home had not been easy for Sansa, but for an entire week, her parents were silent around her. It was an odd and uncomfortable silence, but they did not seem as upset with her as she expected them to be. Catelyn and Ned both made the effort to say good morning, good night, and to check on her to see if she wanted anything to eat or if everything was all right. There was a concern laced behind every word of theirs, but neither of them made the effort to come forward and talk with her seriously about what happened the morning after she had snuck out to see Sandor during the night. Sansa wondered if maybe they were afraid to talk to her, and then she wondered if they thought they were bad parents for not seeing what had been going on with Joffrey, but she never mustered up the courage to talk to them either. It was silence on both ends.

 

By the end of the week, Sansa was sitting alone in her room and messing around with organizing her vanity. It wasn’t as if anything was out of place on it, but she was bored and she hadn’t gotten an answer from Sandor when she had tried to call him earlier. Organizing her room was thus busy work to keep her from thinking too much, so she kept her hands busy and sorted everything out in the drawers and on top of the vanity surface and wiped the mirror down to clean it. She was in the middle of going through her small collection of nail polish when there was a knock on her bedroom door.

 

Sansa glanced up to look at it. She wondered at first if she should even say anything. A part of her was still upset with her parents, but they hadn’t tried to hurt her further. Catelyn had been very supportive so far with Sansa in a way that most mothers might not have been in regards to their daughter seeing an older man, but Catelyn had also tried to talk to Sandor and to get to know him. Catelyn allowed it so long as Sandor proved himself to be a decent person, even though most people might think a decent person his age wouldn’t have been bothering with a girl Sansa’s age. The point was Catelyn was trying to the best of her ability, and despite it all, she was putting her daughter first and watching out for her while allowing it, so she wasn’t being a neglectful mother.

 

On the other hand, Ned hadn’t been as supportive or accepting as Catelyn when it came to his attention that Sansa had been seeing Sandor. However, after what had happened a week ago on that morning, he seemed almost sullen with all of the knowledge placed upon his shoulders. Still, Sansa sensed something else underneath the surface of Ned’s exterior. He wanted to reach out to Sansa, but he didn’t seem to know how to do it. Sansa thought she could be spiteful if she wanted to be, but she didn’t really want to be. It was childish and hurtful, and more than anything, she just wanted both of her parents to understand. She also wanted them to start treating her like an adult instead of a child, and if she acted like a child, then they weren’t going to do that.

 

“Come in,” Sansa finally called out towards the door, and it slowly opened up to reveal her father on the other side. He just stood there for a moment, staring down at her with his hand resting on the door handle. Sansa stared back at him from where she was seated on the floor.

 

“Is it all right if I come in?” Ned asked, and Sansa was silent, but she nodded her head as she turned back to her nail polishes.

 

Ned walked into her room, and she heard him shut the door behind himself. If he shut the door, then he wanted to have a private conversation with her. Sansa fell still, watching him out of the corner of her eye. Ned took a seat on the floor about a foot from Sansa, and she put down the little glass bottle of polish in her hand as she turned to face him again.

 

“I want to talk to you,” Ned began carefully, “about something we’ve both been avoiding. Your mother and I have . . . discussed this together already, and I wanted to be the one to talk to you.” Ned was quiet for a while, but Sansa remained silent and waited patiently for him to continue. “It hurt me,” Ned told her in a firm voice, looking Sansa in the eyes, “when you went to your mother and not to me. I want to be a good father to you. I want you to trust me as well as my judgment. I understand we will not always see eye to eye, and you are growing into a young woman, and that’s a hard thing for a father to deal with. I do not believe my reaction to Sandor was out of place. As father looking out for his daughter and wanting the best for her, it was a natural reaction to have. I love you, Sansa, and everything I do is for your well-being and not to try and hurt you. I know it may seem that way sometimes. It’s the hard way of parenting,” Ned added, and he cracked the smallest of smiles on his face. “Our opinions are not always loved by our children.”

 

Sansa tore her gaze away from her father’s eyes, looking down at the floor near her legs. She could feel herself steadily growing upset, though not because she was mad at her father but because she knew it was all true. She knew her father loved her, and she knew her father was only trying to look out for her, but she wanted him to talk to her like she was a person and not a puppet—just like he was talking to her now.

 

“I know all of that,” Sansa said quietly without looking back up. “I only wish you would listen to me instead of acting like my own voice doesn’t matter. It hurts when I try to tell you things and you act like I’m lying, or like I’m some silly girl with my head in the clouds, and you know that I’m not. I used to be. When I was younger, I used to be so childish, but I’m not anymore. I just want you to listen to me and to hear me, not to just let it go in one ear and out the other.” Sansa found herself shaking her head. “And you haven’t been doing that, Dad.”

 

“And for that, I am sorry,” Ned told her in a softer voice. He leaned towards her, but he seemed reluctant to touch her or hug her. “Do you . . . want to tell me about him, so maybe I can understand this a bit better?”

 

Sansa lifted her head again to look at her father. “What do you want to know?” she asked, not seeing any reason to hide things from him anymore.

 

“Well,” Ned said, looking for the right words to say to her or the right questions to ask. He pondered her inquiry for a few seconds. “How long have you known him?”

 

“Five months,” Sansa answered him. When Ned’s expression grew shocked, she quickly added, “But we haven’t been seeing each other for that long. We were just friends at first. We started seeing each other about three months ago.”

 

“That’s . . . that’s a long time.” Ned looked uncertain how to proceed, his brow furrowing with his thoughts. “You’ve known him five months, and he hasn’t made you uncomfortable or made you feel unsafe?”

 

“No,” Sansa said without hesitation. “Well, I mean, we disagree sometimes like normal people, and we have fights, but they’re rare.”

 

“Has he ever yelled at you?”

 

Sansa shook her head. “I usually yell at him,” she said, feeling a small laugh come up at that. Ned smiled as well, and he finally reached out, placing his hand upon her shoulder and giving her a gentle squeeze. It was almost as if he was proud of her. He withdrew his hand, though, and brought it back to himself.

 

“How did this happen?” Ned asked. “The two of you?”

 

Sansa sighed, knowing it was a long story, but she could find a way to shorten it for him. “It started the night I was late getting home because of Joffrey. Joffrey had been drinking, and then he was driving us around the city. I asked him to pull over, and he wouldn’t, but he stopped at Sandor’s pub because Boros and Meryn suggested it. I wouldn’t leave with Joffrey, so he left me there. I was too afraid to call anyone because I was afraid to get in trouble, but Sandor gave me a ride home. I went back to his pub to talk to him, but he didn’t want to be friends. He said I was too young. I gave him my number, but it upset him because of my age. I didn’t think I would hear from him again, but he called me a week later. We started hanging out after that, but only as friends. One day, I kissed him, but he got upset again. He said what he said the first time, that I was too young for him. We could be friends, but nothing more, he said. I got mad at him. I yelled. I slammed his door. He tried calling me nonstop for a week to apologize, but I ignored him. When we finally talked again, I told him I wanted to be together. That I had feelings for him.”

 

Here, Sansa turned her face to look directly at her father. She wanted to make eye contact with him as she told him this next part because it was important that Ned understood Sandor’s original position on their relationship. It wasn’t like dating someone her age was normal for Sandor, and it wasn’t like she was a young woman in the arms of a predator. Ned had to understand that, or he wasn’t ever going to accept their relationship.

 

“He tried everything he could think of to ward me away,” Sansa continued softly. “He told me the truth about his past, about his record, and he told me he wasn’t a white knight on the back of noble steed that could ride me off into the sunset. He told me that he had problems, that he wasn’t perfect, and that I had my whole life ahead of me and I shouldn’t be wasting my youth on him.” Sansa could see her father’s face change with every word from her lips, his expression softening and his doubts being chased away. “He tried, Dad, because he was afraid I was too young for him. Even though he liked me, he was afraid of my age, but I asked him to give us a chance, just to give us a chance. I begged him, and he tried, but I begged and he pulled me in his arms and said yes.”

 

Ned remained silent after she had finished speaking, his eyes passing over her face as he absorbed everything she had just said to him. “Five months,” he said, “and he never tried to take advantage of you in any way? Never tried to talk you into anything? Never tried to get you into any trouble?”

 

Sansa slowly shook her head at all of his questions. “No, he hasn’t done any of those things,” she answered in a gentle voice. “He cares, Dad, whether you believe that or not.”

 

“And you?” Ned asked. “You care about him?”

 

Sansa nodded her head at his question. “Yes, I do,” she whispered.

 

Ned looked down at his lap, inhaling a deep breath. He seemed to be trying to work through this somehow in his head to reach a conclusion that would end in the best possible results for everybody. Sansa could see the war behind his eyes. He felt that being a good father meant stepping between the two of them, but there must have been some small part of him that doubted that idea as well or it wouldn’t have been such a hard decision for him to make.

 

“What about Joffrey?” Ned asked quietly, and Sansa wondered if he changed the topic because he had yet to make up his mind about Sandor. “Why didn’t you tell me about him? I would’ve stopped it. I would have seen to that boy had I known. I’ll still see to him—”

 

Sansa felt the panic of fear set in her, and she quickly shook her head. “No, please, Dad,” she asked him. “Leave it alone—”

 

“You don’t worry about that,” Ned said with a firm tone. “I’ll see to it. He’s Robert’s boy. Joffrey won’t be getting away with what he did to you.”

 

“Dad, please—”

 

“That is the end of that,” Ned cut her off. His tone softened all of a sudden, though, and he returned to his original question. “I want you to tell me why you felt you couldn’t come to me about it.”

 

“I didn’t think anyone would believe me . . . ” Sansa began, but something about it didn’t sound right. It didn’t sound as strong this time as it sounded the last time she said it, and so Sansa thought about it. No, she didn’t think other people would believe her, but her father was a different story. There was a different reason for him.

 

Ned looked hurt by her words, though. “You didn’t think your own father would believe you?” he asked.

 

“I was afraid,” Sansa added in a quieter voice. “I was afraid of what Joffrey would do if I told anyone.”

 

Ned looked like he might say something to that, but he opted for silence instead. After a long moment of no words being spoken between them, Ned leaned forward and pulled Sansa into a hug. She wrapped her arms around her father’s back to clutch him, thankful that he at least understood why she hadn’t come to him or Catelyn sooner about what happened between her and Joffrey. Fear was a powerful weapon to make one reconsider the words coming out of their mouth, and Sansa had been afraid the whole time she was with Joffrey. Joffrey had wielded it over her like a weapon, and she couldn’t speak a word except for what he had wanted to hear out of her lips.

 

After their embrace, Ned asked Sansa to come downstairs and spend some time with him and her mother. Sansa did, and she helped them with preparing the evening meal. The whole family had supper together, and after a long time of stress and discord between them, things were happy and normal again inside of the Stark household. Even Arya noticed the difference in the air, and she cracked more jokes than usual at the dinner table. When things escalated into a food fight between Arya and Bran, instead of getting mad at them, Ned joined in while Catelyn hollered about the mess that she would have to clean up later. Sansa even laughed at all of it right along with Rickon. After everything had calmed down, Ned promised to clean up the mess with Arya and Bran, and then he marched them both straight upstairs and sent them to different bathrooms in the house to wash up.

 

Sansa returned back to her room and checked her phone. She saw a missed call from Sandor, and she dialed his number to call him back. It rang a few times, but he eventually picked up. “Hey,” said his voice on the other end of the line, and Sansa smiled softly at it. It was nice to hear his voice after everything she had spoken about with her father.

 

“Hey,” Sansa said right back, and then she quickly added, “Are you doing anything today?”

 

“Not anymore,” Sandor answered her. “I was running an errand earlier, but I’m free now.”

 

“Would you like to go somewhere?” Sansa asked.

 

“Where?”

 

“I don’t know,” she said, trying to think of something. “We could go walking somewhere in the city. Window shop or something. Just spend time together.”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Okay,” Sansa told him, feeling a little grin come to her lips. “I’ll see you in a few?”

 

“Yeah, I’ll be by,” Sandor said.

 

“Okay,” she repeated happily. “Bye.”

 

“Bye,” Sandor told her, sounding amused with the tone of her voice. Sansa pulled the phone away from her ear, watching as the call ended on his end. Sandor usually hung up calls before her. When she put her phone away in her purse, Sansa walked over to her vanity and checked her reflection in the mirror. Her clothes looked fine to wear out. She was wearing jean shorts and a loose white blouse that was halfway unbuttoned with a blue spaghetti strap shirt underneath it. After fixing her hair real quick by pinning some of it up and out of the way with a decorative clip in the back, she slipped on a pair of shoes and grabbed her purse.

 

Sansa left her room, closing the door behind herself. The walk down the staircase was unhurried, and it led her into an empty living room. Bran and Arya were probably still washing up, so Sansa walked into the kitchen to look for her mother. She found Catelyn there, putting away the leftovers and cleaning up the dishes left behind from their meal. Rickon was standing at the kitchen sink, using one of the chairs to stand at the same level as his mother as he helped with washing the dishes.

 

“Mum,” Sansa called out, and her mother looked up after putting away one of the bowls she had just filled with leftover vegetables into the refrigerator.

 

Catelyn straightened up, closing the refrigerator door, and raised her eyebrows in a silent question until she looked down at Sansa’s side and saw the purse hanging on Sansa’s shoulder. She seemed to know immediately what Sansa was about to tell her. Catelyn’s eyes lifted back to Sansa’s face, her expression softening into what seemed like a silent and sympathetic understanding.

 

“I’m going to spend some time with Sandor in town,” Sansa told her. It wasn’t a question, seeking approval, but a statement to let her mother that she was going to do it whether it was found acceptable or not. Catelyn inhaled a deep breath, but she exhaled it out of her lungs in what appeared to be a gesture of giving in without a fight.

 

“Be safe,” Catelyn said, and she stared at Sansa for a moment before she briefly made a smile for her daughter. She looked away after that, walking up to the sink to stand at Rickon’s side. Sansa watched as her mother began to help Rickon with the dishes. The corner of Sansa’s mouth lifted somewhat, but it didn’t quite make a smile. Still, it was something. Even the smallest gesture of understanding from her mother seemed to let her know that Catelyn believed her, though neither of her parents seemed to agree with Sansa’s choice to spend the night at Sandor’s apartment. At the very least, they did not believe their daughter was a liar.

 

Sansa headed out the front door and into the evening sunshine, which was bright in her face. Shielding her eyes with her right hand, Sansa walked down the driveway to the sidewalk beyond it. She followed the familiar path to the end of the road, waiting for Sandor to pull up. He wasn’t there yet, but it didn’t take his car long to appear. Though her parents knew she was seeing him now, Sansa was so used to meeting up at the end of the road that most of the time they still continued that particular routine. It might have been strange, but Sansa liked it. She had always met Sandor at the end of the road, and there was something warm and familiar about walking down the sidewalk to meet him.

 

She climbed into the passenger seat and looked over at Sandor, smiling brightly at him as she tilted her head to the side. Sandor returned her smile with a small quirk of his lips in the corner, not quite a full-fledged smile on him, and asked Sansa, “What’s got you in such a good mood?”

 

“Oh, nothing,” Sansa said. “I’m just in a good mood.”

 

“You’re not still in trouble with your parents?” Sandor ventured slowly, having known about their unpleasant reactions because Sansa had told him about those already.

 

“It doesn’t seem like it,” Sansa told him in a quiet voice, and she glanced down at the armrest as her fingers played with it, dancing along the fabric in no particular pattern or order. Her hand stilled all of a sudden, though, and she patted it down against the armrest as she lifted her gaze to grin at Sandor. “Let’s go,” Sansa said cheerfully. “We can walk along the plaza and visit the shops,” she suggested, though she hoped Sandor wouldn’t refuse it. He wasn’t the window shopping type, but Sansa hadn’t been to the plaza in a long time.

 

“All right,” he said, sounding amused with her yet again, and he pulled the car back onto the street and drove towards the boulevards of Kingsland. It was a short drive, in which they entertained themselves with some idle chatting, until Sandor pulled into a parking space along the side of a packed boulevard. People were out everywhere today, and it was likely Sansa would run into someone she knew since it was the evening time and school was out for the day, but a part of her didn’t seem to care. Sansa was tired of hiding in the dark with Sandor. She wanted to _go_ places with him, too, not just visit his apartment. Although, to be fair, she liked visiting his apartment and having all of his attention on her.

 

They stepped out onto the sidewalk after getting out of his car, and Sansa walked up close to Sandor’s side and wound her right arm around his left arm. It was a big crowd out today, and Sansa figured it was smarter to stay latched together if they were going to be walking the boulevard. Sandor looked down at their arms, though, as if he wasn’t sure if it was a good idea, and Sansa stared at him until he raised his eyes to hers. She gave his arm a reassuring squeeze with her free hand, and Sandor’s expression relaxed a little.

 

“It’s all right, you know,” Sansa told him as they began to walk together. “At some point, it’s going to come out that we’re seeing each other, isn’t it?” she asked, glancing over at him. “We might as well not be so afraid with each other in public.”

 

“I know,” Sandor said, letting out a small sigh. “I’m just not used to it, I guess.”

 

“Well,” Sansa drawled out, leaning into his side as she grinned, “you can get used to it _now_.”

 

They walked for a little while down the boulevard, gazing at various sights along the way, until a particular and unique looking shop caught Sansa’s eye. She steered Sandor towards the entrance, pulling open the door with her free hand, and walked them inside. Compared to the bright sunlight outside, it was dimmer in the shop and the air was cool instead of hot. Sansa slowly let go of Sandor’s arm, her jaw dropping open as she took in everything before her.

 

It was a gorgeous shop, if it could even be called that. It looked as though it housed hundreds of antiques, traditional objects and clothing, some old world furniture, paintings, and even jewelry in the glass cases of the counter over to the far right of the store. Much of the decorations featured horses, though Sansa wasn’t sure why. As her gaze roved further over the store, she noticed there were also traditional china sets, a few glass and wire or wooden and seashell wind chimes here or there, and a whole shelf section dedicated to nothing but incense. Everything caught Sansa’s eye, and she didn’t know what to inspect first, so she just began to wander and examine it all at once, letting her fingers rove over the objects as she passed them by.

 

Sansa found a little rack of shawls made up of fine threads and glittering beads, and there was a soft blue colored one that snatched her attention away from all of the others. Carefully, she picked it up and wound it around her head, turning to see if Sandor was anywhere nearby. He was just a few steps behind her, inspecting one of the chairs with mild interest in his eyes. When he looked up and saw her, Sansa grinned at him and held onto the shawl.

 

“It’s just my color,” she said happily, and he snorted at her. When Sandor reached her, he stood close enough to put his hands on her waist. His eyes gazed down at her, squinting as if trying to ascertain something.

 

“It does match your eyes,” he said slowly, and it took Sansa a moment to realize he was teasing her. She gently slapped his chest, and Sandor just looked amused at her reaction. Removing the shawl from her head, Sansa folded it over her arm. She was thinking about buying it today before she left. As she turned around and walked over to one of the counters, Sandor followed her. On top the counter there was a multitude of fine wooden boxes, each of them holding something unique and special. Sansa began to inspect those as well, fingering the objects within that laid upon velvet cloth. Inside one of the boxes, she found decorative metal fish with working joints and fins. She picked one up, loving how it moved so fluidly, and then she selected a blue and red one from the bunch.

 

“I’m going to get this for my mother,” Sansa said, turning around to look at Sandor. She held up the little painted metal fish for him to see it. Sandor raised his eyebrows at it.

 

“A fish?” he asked, sounding skeptical of the gift.

 

“My mother loves fish,” Sansa told him, and she turned back around to inspect the boxes some more.

 

“Why does she like fish?” Sandor inquired further, and he found something on the counter that caught his eye, leaning forward and looking down into one of the boxes.

 

“I think it’s where she grew up,” Sansa continued, explaining it to Sandor. “They had rivers and lakes and ponds everywhere, and there were always fish. She loves them. She had a bunch of pet fish when she was younger, and she took care of them.” Sansa shrugged her shoulders. “So, she loves fish. Fish patterns, fish bowls, fish designs, fish paintings . . . ”

 

Sandor snorted again. “Your mother’s a strange woman,” he said.

 

“Well,” Sansa asked, turning to look at him, “what do you like?”

 

Sandor looked over at her. He was quiet for a moment, thinking about it. “Dogs,” he said finally. “I like dogs.”

 

Sansa grinned at him. “Then, why don’t you have a pet dog?”

 

Sandor shrugged at her inquiry. “I wouldn’t be able to watch one while I was at work.”

 

“You get a _dog_ sitter,” Sansa suggested, grinning even wider. “You have an excuse for everything,” she said then, shaking her head at him.

 

“No, I don’t,” he denied.

 

“Yes, you do,” she told him, and Sansa turned around to walk along the edge of the counter. Sansa kept walking while Sandor was looking at something in the boxes upon the wooden countertop, and she circled around to the other side before heading away from it. It brought her towards the right side of the shop closer to the glass counters that held the jewelry. Sansa loved jewelry, though she didn’t wear a whole lot of it. Mostly, she opted to wear smaller pieces. Sansa didn’t like big and gaudy things as they looked downright tacky to her.

 

Leaning over the counter, she peered down into the glass below her hands. There were so many beautiful things within the glass casing, none of it gaudy or cheaply made, but there was one specific piece that locked her gaze. It was a necklace made out of a fine golden chain with a fringe of pearl droplets hanging along it. Each pearl was shaped like a teardrop, and they were a sort of silvery grey color instead of white, and each one was also buffed to a meticulous shine. There were little clear gemstones on it as well, fixed right above each pearl teardrop, and above the necklace chain right across from the gemstone was another tinier pearl. It was so gorgeous that Sansa’s mouth fell open.

 

Suddenly, the glass case opened up and startled Sansa to pull back and look up. There was a man behind the counter. He had seen the necklace Sansa was looking at behind the glass, and he retrieved it to drape it across the top of his hand and hold it out to her. Sansa looked from the necklace back to his face. He was enormously tall. Perhaps even taller than Sandor, she thought, and he was broad and well-built. He wore a black button down long sleeve shirt, halfway undone, with a dark green shirt underneath it. He had deeply tanned skin, a head full of long dreadlocks, and a face as gorgeous as the necklace. There was dark black kohl smudged around his eyes, giving them a smoky and intense gaze.

 

“A beautiful necklace,” he said in a deep voice, “for a beautiful lady.”

 

It took Sansa a moment to realize she was staring with her mouth half open. She couldn’t help it. He was a handsome man. A soft smile drifted across her features until she heard a throat clear behind her, and Sansa blushed furiously as she realized it was Sandor. The man, however, only seemed amused as he looked up to see Sandor somewhere behind her. Sansa saw a grin spread across the man’s face, and inwardly, she sighed like a twelve-year-old girl. He was dreamy.

 

“Thank you,” she said out loud when she found herself capable of speech again, “but I don’t think I could afford it.”

 

The man returned his intense gaze to her, his eyes twinkling with some sort of secret amusement. “That is what boyfriends and husbands are for,” he said, glancing up briefly at Sandor over her shoulders to aim a smile in Sandor’s direction. “Showering their beautiful ladies with gifts.”

 

Sansa pursed her lips, though, and she shook her head. “No, I couldn’t—”

 

“Here,” the man said, and he made a gesture for her to turn around, “try it on and look at it in the mirror. See if you like it.”

 

Sansa obeyed his request, and when she turned around, she was facing Sandor as the man behind the counter draped the necklace over her and clasped it behind her neck. He gently lifted her hair out from underneath it, her neck tingling with the sensation. Sandor didn’t look mad, though, and he definitely didn’t look jealous either. He had a strange expression on his face, though, that Sansa couldn’t quite properly read. It was a look that seemed halfway between uneasy and yet wanting. The look on Sandor’s face confused Sansa so much that her own expression twisted into uneasiness over it.

 

When the necklace was on her neck, though, she turned to face the mirror atop the glass casing. Her breath hitched at the sight. It was lovely on her, and it was small, so there was an elegant and dainty air about the piece of jewelry. Sansa wanted it very much, but at the same time, she didn’t want to ask Sandor to buy it for her. If Sandor wanted to buy her something, then he would buy it himself and give it to her. She didn’t want to have to ask for it. Sansa loved the necklace, but she shook her head.

 

“No,” she said softly, “I don’t think it’s for me.” She reached behind her neck to unclasp it, and then she carefully handed it back to the man behind the counter. “I’m sorry,” she said, but she gave him a soft smile despite her words.

 

Before the man could try to talk her into it, a high and shrill voice of an older woman hollered out from the back behind a bead curtain, “Drogo!” Then, it came again even louder, “ _Drogo!_ ” The older lady started yelling in another language, so Sansa had no idea what she was saying, but the man behind the counter turned around and immediately yelled right back at her in the same language. They had an exchange for a while before he sighed deeply and rolled his eyes, and then he turned to Sansa and Sandor to give them a tight-lipped smile. “Excuse me for a moment,” he said, holding up his hands, and then he disappeared behind the bead curtain, and Sansa could hear their hollering match as it continued in the back.

 

Sandor had crept up behind Sansa without her realizing it, so when his hand came down to touch her shoulder, she gasped with a jump.

 

Sandor laughed low at her. “Sorry,” he said softly.

 

Sansa turned around to give him a pointed look. “You know, you used to tell me not to apologize so much.”

 

“What?” Sandor asked, looking confused. “You want me to be gruff and mean?”

 

The look on Sansa’s face fell. “No . . . ”

 

“Well, then,” Sandor told her with a tone of finality. “That’s settled.”

 

Sansa narrowed her eyes at him, but Sandor just seemed to be on the verge of a smile that never quite came to his face. Instead, his hand reached out, and he gently stroked his thumb along her jaw to her chin. He looked like he wanted to ask her something, so when he finally did, Sansa was only partially surprised and that was because of the topic.

 

“Did you like that necklace?” Sandor asked her, and his voice was quieter than before.

 

Sansa’s mouth opened without any words coming out of it until she shook her head and closed her mouth, laughing nervously at her delayed reaction. Her eyes drifted down to look away from his gaze. “No,” she denied. “No, I didn’t.”

 

“You did,” he murmured back, not fooled by her denial.

 

Sansa sighed at his remark. “It’s too much—”

 

“If you like it, I could . . . ” Sandor paused, like it was a struggle for him to say the words because he had never said them before. “I could . . . get it for you.”

 

Sansa stared at him for a moment, her mouth hanging open somewhat, until the man returned from the back room and Sandor pulled his hand away from her face. Sansa glanced over at the man behind the counter, who smiled keenly at them once more. He jutted his thumb over his shoulder at the bead curtain hanging in the doorway behind him, and said with laugh, “Mothers.”

 

Sansa handed the man the shawl and the painted metal fish, smiling back at him. “I want to get these,” she said, and so he checked her out. After she had her bag around her arm and was walking towards the exit, she looked back and noticed Sandor wasn’t following her. He was still standing at the counter, paying for something else. _The necklace_ , Sansa realized, and she felt horrible because he probably only bought it to not disappoint her and not because he had wanted to buy it for her. Besides, it was real stuff, and it was probably very expensive. That felt like real gold, and those pearls weren’t fake.

 

Sansa walked off to pretend like she hadn’t seen him do it, and she waited by the door to the shop for Sandor. When he reached her, he wasn’t carrying a bag. Sansa silently wondered which pocket on his clothing held the necklace, but she didn’t outright ask him despite her curiosity. They left the shop, and as they continued to wander along the boulevard while the sun went down, Sansa stopped for a moment to drape her shawl around her shoulders just because she wanted to show it off. She reached up to pull her hair out from underneath it, but Sandor stopped her by saying all of a sudden, “Here, let me.”

 

Her hands froze halfway there. She stood still as Sandor’s hands grazed her neck and gathered her hair together, pulling it out from underneath the shawl. When he was done, he stepped back away from her, and Sansa looked up into his face. Sandor was gazing at her, though, oblivious to her eyes and focused on everything else about her appearance. His hand came up to touch her jaw like it did earlier, his thumb grazing her chin, and Sansa found herself struck with a sudden and inexplicable realization as she looked up at him.

 

“There,” Sandor said softly, and his hand dropped from her chin. He continued walking like nothing had happened at all, but Sansa felt her heart beating erratically all the way back to his car. As she got into the passenger seat and closed the door, Sandor got into the driver seat. Once both of them were inside the car, he asked her, “Do you want to go back home now?”

 

“No,” Sansa said below her breath, and she glanced over at him. “Let’s go to your apartment.”

 

Sandor raised his brow. “Are you sure? I thought we were trying to spend time away from it.” Despite the serious look on his face, there was a tone of amusement in his voice.

 

Sansa laughed as she looked down at her lap. “I don’t want to go home yet,” she said, and she looked back at him to smile. “I’d rather spend it with you.”

 

“If you’re sure . . . ” he said, and he lifted his hands up to accentuate it.

 

“I’m sure,” Sansa said, grinning.

 

“Okay . . . ” Sandor drawled out again like he was questioning her, but she knew he wasn’t and that he was only teasing her, and so Sansa laughed yet again.

 

“Go on and drive,” she ordered him. Although she meant it, she was teasing him right back, too. Sandor followed her orders, though, and he drove them down the streets in the direction of his apartment. Sansa glanced at him from time to time, trying to look at him without him noticing that she was looking at him. Something about Sandor seemed different now, and Sansa couldn’t make out what it was—but it wasn’t really him, it was her. Once she realized that, she looked away from him and watched the street lights, the occasional trees, and the buildings pass by outside of her window.

 

In that moment out on the boulevard, Sansa had suddenly realized she loved Sandor, but she didn’t say it out loud to him.

 

Sansa didn’t know why, but she didn’t say it out loud.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 43\. You’re Guaranteed to Run This Town – “The Ballad of Mona Lisa” by Panic! at the Disco  
> 44\. Dark Enough to See Your Light – “Accidental Babies” by Damien Rice  
> 45\. Heavy in Your Arms – “Heavy in Your Arms” by Florence + the Machine  
> 46\. I Hear It’s Such a Long Way Down – “Long Way Down” by Timbaland (feat. Chris Daughtry)  
> 47\. You Win Some and You Lose Some – “Long Way Down” by Timbaland (feat. Chris Daughtry)  
> 48\. I Can Be Your China Doll – “Without You” by Lana Del Rey  
> 49\. Fire and Gasoline – “Tomorrow” by Chris Young  
> 50\. Don’t Hold Your Breath – “Don’t Hold Your Breath” by Nichole Scherzinger  
> 51\. The Season’s Ripe for Change – “Eyes of the Devil” by Seether  
> 52\. If You Let Me, Here’s What I’ll Do – “Take Care” by Drake (feat. Rihanna)


	53. You Have Broken Me All the Way Down

_* * *_

 

Sansa was quiet on the rest of the ride back to his apartment, though Sandor wasn’t sure why. He glanced at her once or twice, and it looked like she was in some kind of deep thought as she gazed out of the passenger side window, so he left her alone instead of trying to talk to her some more. Besides, he had other things on his mind as well. For instance, he was thinking about how he was supposed to give that necklace to Sansa. He had purchased it real quick after she had already walked off, and Sandor had even looked back to make sure she had walked off before he bought it. The problem, though, was finding the right moment to actually give it to her. Sandor had never given a gift to a woman before, let alone even bought one, and the only other thing he had truly bought for Sansa aside from food when they went out to eat together was that ducky soap he purchased for her months ago.

 

Of course, he had broken that gift. When he had thrown the duck soap against the shower door during his short fit of rage, the thing cracked into two pieces. Apparently, it was two pieces of soap fused together at the center from top to bottom with the rope in the center of the two pieces. Well, Sandor had cracked it right open when he threw it. That was how hard he threw the damn thing. As a result, Sansa had never actually gotten that gift. He had broken it, and then he had stuffed it under his bathroom sink and, for the longest time, had forgotten about it until just now.

 

Considering his dilemma of not knowing how to give a gift to a woman, Sandor thought about the necklace during the entire drive to his apartment. It had been wrapped in a small bag and tucked away into his left pants pocket. The thing had been expensive. It was genuine fourteen carat gold and saltwater pearls, though the gemstones were only cubic zirconia. They weren’t diamonds or anything. If they had been real diamonds, Sandor wasn’t sure how he would have felt about buying the necklace. He wasn’t keen on the idea. Diamonds seemed the sort of thing saved for married couples and not people dating only for three months. Luckily, they hadn’t been diamonds, and the idea of buying saltwater pearls on a gold chain hadn’t bothered him at all.

 

When they reached his apartment building, Sandor led the way up to his floor, feeling nervous the whole time. He wondered if he should give it to her now when they got inside of his apartment or if he should wait and give it to her another day. Sansa had begun chattering again once they had gotten out of the car, though, and Sandor had been trying to push away his thoughts to listen to her and respond back. He didn’t want her to think he was ignoring her, especially not after the week she had been through with her parents after she accidentally spent too long at his apartment that night a week ago.

 

As Sandor unlocked the door to his apartment, he briefly shut his eyes to will that thought away. He didn’t want to think about how Sansa had managed to rub herself on him until he came on himself in his boxers. Sandor hadn’t had any woman in any kind of way for two years, so he was going to go ahead and blame his easy release on the lack of sexual contact with another person for so long. Contact with himself didn’t count, after all, which was all he had been doing if the urge happened to strike him before he met Sansa. Celibacy definitely had its pitfalls, though Sansa seemed pleased with herself for what she had done before she had gotten insecure about it. Sandor imagined if he hadn’t gotten any kind of release, Sansa probably would have been the one embarrassed instead of him. She also probably would have asked him what she had done wrong because she didn’t seem to realize it was a good thing for a man to _not_ climax through that sort of contact.

 

Sandor hadn’t wanted to explain that to her when it had happened, though. It was one of those things that proved how virginal she was, and she was starting to make him feel like an inexperienced virgin all over again, too. Sandor shook his head at that thought to shake it away and pushed open the door to his apartment to let both of them inside, though he stood over to the left of the doorway to let Sansa go in first. He followed her inside, closing the door behind them, and Sansa immediately went over to his couch to sit down on it. _Good_ , Sandor thought. It wasn’t that he didn’t like spending time with her in his bedroom, but he was really hoping she didn’t just steer straight for it.

 

Seated on his couch and playing with the loose ends of her shawl, Sansa glanced up at him and smiled in his direction. Something struck Sandor’s mind right then that he thought he ought to share with Sansa in case it ever came back to her. After all, it involved that false bit of information he had told Brienne. Sandor didn’t think Sansa would ever doubt him over it, or at least he hoped not, but it was better to tell her himself now than wait for her to hear it from someone else.

 

“I wanted to tell you something,” Sandor began, and he walked over to the chair in his living room, scooted it closer to the couch, and then sat down in it. Sandor looked up at her to make sure he was making eye contact with Sansa. “I haven’t told anyone I know that we’re seeing each other,” he started to explain, but Sansa cut him off.

 

“Loras and Renly know,” she said, and Sandor felt himself grit his teeth behind closed lips where she couldn’t see it.

 

“They don’t count,” he told her.

 

“Okay,” Sansa said, furrowing her brow, but she gave him a funny look while she smiled at him.

 

“The point is,” he went on, “I haven’t told anyone, and Brienne came by the pub a few days ago. Somehow I blurted out that I had a girlfriend. She asked who, but I named an old coworker.” Sandor grew quiet as he stared out at Sansa, but she didn’t have a reaction to his words. Her expression remained the same, and she appeared to be completely unaffected by them. “I wanted to tell you in case you heard that from her,” Sandor added in a softer voice.

 

Sansa narrowed her eyes and tilted her head to the side in a gesture of curiosity. However, there was a small smile etched out on her face to balance out the look. “Why didn’t you tell her my name?” she asked.

 

Sandor had to take a moment to think about that. “I didn’t think she would like me anymore if I told her,” he confessed in all honestly.

 

Sansa’s amusement grew with his admittance, and she grinned at him. “Since when do you care what other people think of you?”

 

Sandor was quiet at that, too. He stared back at Sansa, who was waiting for an answer and who thought this was amusing, but it was a more serious topic for Sandor. It was true. He had never cared what people thought of him before, but he already knew the answer to that. Sandor felt a frown crease his face at the corners of his lips and eyes.

 

“Since I met you,” he admitted softly.

 

The smile on Sansa’s face fell from her lips to leave her with a slightly surprised and open-mouthed expression, but then that fell from her face, too. Sandor wasn’t sure why he started caring what other people thought of him, but he had starting caring about what Sansa thought of him, and it seemed as if that one feeling had opened up a floodgate inside of him. Slowly, it had begun to affect other things in his life as well. Sandor found himself acting differently from time to time around people, sidestepping the possibility of upsetting them or tiptoeing around his usual behavior more so than usual.

 

It was strange to realize he had started doing this all because of her. How could his life change so much because of one person? Sure, Elder Brother had helped Sandor through a lot of rough shit, but it was different when it was therapy and counseling versus just forming a simple human bond with someone. Sandor had somehow developed a connection with the unlikeliest of people, and now he was finding his life changing even more drastically than before. While it was strange, it wasn’t entirely strange. Sandor had never loved his life, and he had mostly lived on his hatred and inspiring fear in others for the longest time. Now, he wanted nothing more than to make a decent living at his pub, go to bed at a decent hour, and make this young woman sitting across from him smile with a happiness that he had inspired in her, not someone else.

 

He realized, then, that he ought to give her that duck soap back now that he had remembered it after so long of forgetting about it. Sandor got up from the chair abruptly, startling Sansa’s stillness away from her, and walked down the hallway to the bathroom. He opened the lower cabinet door on the sink, fished out the little box holding the broken duck soap, and headed out of the bathroom towards the living room again. Once he reached the couch, he circled around and held out the box to her. Sansa looked up at him first, and then her eyes fell to the little teal and yellow box in his hands with the yellow duck shaped soap inside of it. She gasped softly, reaching out to take it from his hands.

 

Sansa turned the box over and over as if she had never seen it before in her life, and then she opened it up. The two pieces of the soap fell out separately, landing in her lap, and her look of surprise turned briefly to sadness. It looked like the duck had gotten cut straight down the center top to bottom, and the rope was still fused to the soap on one half. “What happened to it?” she asked without looking up, clearly wondering why the duck was in two pieces now instead of one.

 

Sandor bit the inside of his lips. He felt guilty because that was his fault. “I threw it,” he admitted with some reluctance. “When you weren’t answering my calls. Before I punched your brother. I found it in my bathroom after you left, and I threw it. It broke.”

 

Sansa finally looked up at him, then. Her mouth was hanging open again, and if possible, her look of sadness over the broken duck soap increased to be ten times worse. Her bottom lip started to tremble, but her eyes were dry. Sansa put the broken pieces of the duck soap aside along with their box, rising from the couch to suddenly stand on her tip toes and wrap her arms around his neck. Her reaction startled Sandor because he wasn’t sure why she was hugging him, but he leaned forward to take the strain off her feet and wrapped his arms around her as well.

 

“I didn’t know that,” Sansa whispered near his ear, and if Sandor hadn’t imagined it, there was a trace of guilt in her voice, too. Her hand smoothed itself over his back, and she pulled away from him. “I’m sorry I put you through that,” she added quietly.

 

Sandor felt the corner of his mouth twitch. “I didn’t treat you any better at the time,” he said, brushing aside how she had reacted during that week. He could have handled that situation a lot better himself, but Sandor wasn’t a man who was used to smoothing things over with people, and so he hadn’t done the best job of it with Sansa in the past. He was getting better at it, though. At least, Sandor thought he was getting better at it by now.

 

Sansa took a step back from Sandor, smiling at him. She returned to the couch, but he remained standing, and he watched as she picked up the broken pieces of the duck soap and tried to hold them together. There was a look of concentration on her face as she did this. It was like Sansa was thinking of how to fix it. “Well,” Sansa began, “it’s just soap, so I could still use it.” She pulled the two pieces apart, inspected the center of them, and then placed them back together again. “I can super glue it or, ooh, I could use toothpicks! Duckward Scissorhands,” Sansa mumbled to herself with a funny tone to her voice, and Sandor snorted at her.

 

She looked up at his snort. “What?” Sansa asked, smiling at him.

 

Sandor shook his head. “Nothing,” he said with a tone of amusement. “You just called a piece of soap Duckward Scissorhands.”

 

“Well, when it has toothpicks sticking out of its chest, it’ll look like little pointy hands,” Sansa said matter-of-factly, “and I will name him, ‘Duckward Scissorhands.’”

 

Sandor snorted again. “Remind me how old you are?”

 

“Shut up,” Sansa told him, grinning once more. “I can be a dork. It’s not on account of my age.”

 

“What’s it on account of?”

 

“My attitude,” Sansa said sagely, and she nodded her once to accentuate it. “It’s good to stay young inside. It keeps life from weighing you down.”

 

“That’s your advice?” Sandor asked, crossing his arms.

 

Sansa nodded again. “Yes,” she said.

 

Sandor lifted a single eyebrow at her. “You’re starting to sound like my sponsor, you know.”

 

“Good,” Sansa said happily, grinning from ear to ear, and she put aside the duck soap on the couch to hop up again. She also took off her shawl and threw it aside. Sansa then wrapped her arms around his waist, tilting her far back to look up at him. “I can be your new sponsor,” she murmured, her eyes glittering with mischief.

 

“Oh yeah?” Sandor asked, his voice falling low. “How are you going to sponsor me?”

 

“Whenever you get the urge . . . ” Sansa whispered, leaning close to his lips but not quite touching them, and Sandor closed his eyes to feel the hot wash of her breath over his mouth. “You just come to me,” she finished below her breath.

 

“I don’t think it works that way,” Sandor murmured back.

 

“Why not?”

 

Sandor slowly shook his head, letting out an amused huff of air. “I just don’t think it does,” he said.

 

Her hands began to roam around his waist, and then they were about to go lower when Sandor reached out and gently grabbed her wrists to stop her. He stopped her because she was just about to touch the pocket on his jeans that held the necklace in it, and he didn’t want her feeling it in his pocket and ruining the surprise. Besides, that brought him back to more serious matters instead of letting himself get distracted by her touch again. Sansa was really good at that, but right now, Sandor thought maybe he should handle the gift giving matter before he let himself get carried away with Sansa again. After all, he had given her the duck soap back first because that was supposed to be hers for the longest time.

 

Sansa glanced up at his face, looking confused by his choice to stop her. Sandor let his hands fall from her wrists to her own hands, and he moved to sit down on the couch. Sansa followed him, and he pulled his hands back to himself as he tried to think about how to do this. Sandor realized just pulling the bag out of his pocket would look tacky, so he raised his eyes to Sansa and told her, “Turn around.”

 

She smiled and bit onto her bottom lip, teeth visible, and wrinkled her nose at him, but she followed his order all the same. Sandor waited until she was sitting on the couch with her back to him, facing the opposite side, one of her legs pulled up and bent at the knee to make the position easier for her. His hands reached out, taking her by the waist, and the gesture elicited a gasp from Sansa’s lips. Slowly, Sandor pulled her towards him until she was close enough to his satisfaction, and then he leaned forward until he was right beside her head, his cheek against her hair.

 

“Close your eyes,” Sandor said into her ear, and he felt the tremble that passed through Sansa’s shoulders at his breath so close to her skin. She followed his instructions again, closing her eyes, and he looked around just to make sure she was doing it properly. With one hand reaching for his pocket, Sandor leaned down onto her neck and pressed his lips there. Sansa tilted her head to the opposite side, exposing her neck to him further, and Sandor reached up with his free hand to brush her hair out of the way before kissing her closer to the back of her neck. Sansa moaned softly, and Sandor somehow worked the necklace out of his pocket without making a whole lot of noise.

 

Besides, he was distracting her, so he highly doubted that she even noticed the small rustle of the bag from his pocket.

 

He brought both of his hands to his lap to unclasp the thing, continuing to distract her with his mouth on her neck all the while. Eventually, he brought one hand around her with the necklace in it, and then he brought his free hand around her, too. Sandor moved upward from her neck to her ear, placing a soft kiss on her earlobe, before he took both pieces of the clasp in each hand. He pulled away from her ear and clasped the necklace around her neck, causing Sansa to open her eyes all of a sudden and gasp at the cold sensation of metal on her neck. She sat still, though, as Sandor let the necklace fall in place. His hands came up to gently pull her hair out from under the chain without catching it in the metal.

 

Slowly, her hand rose to touch the necklace. Her breath hitched in her chest, though Sandor couldn’t tell if it was from the chill of the jewelry or the simple fact that he had just put it around her neck without a warning. Her fingers gently roved over the chain and the pearls, and Sansa bent her head to look down at it. Her breathing had deepened suddenly, and Sandor was worried about what she was thinking. She hadn’t said anything yet, and Sandor wasn’t sure if he had done that right. Maybe he had completely fucked it up, and any moment Sansa was going to get mad at him for buying the necklace after she had told him she didn’t want it.

 

However, Sansa turned herself around on the couch with care in each movement until she was facing him fully. Her hand was still on the necklace, though, and she was looking at him like she might cry, but her eyes weren’t glistening with tears. Sansa’s chest moved up and down like each breath was being heaved in and out silently, her mouth was open, and her eyes were scanning over his features. A well of emotion built up behind her expression, and she fell forward all of a sudden to clasp her arms around his shoulders as she leaned her head against the side of his own, and Sandor felt her hand come up to hold the back of his head.

 

“I love you,” she whispered shakily into his ear.

 

Sandor’s lips slowly parted at his initial reaction of shock due to her declaration. He hadn’t expected to hear that, but once he realized what had been said, his arms came up to circle around her body and his hands grasped her tightly. The fabric of her blouse bunched up under his curling fingers, but Sansa didn’t seem to care. Sandor sat there for a while in a dazed state over her words, not knowing what to do or what to even think. His thoughts were blank, but his emotions felt like turmoil inside of him.

 

Carefully, he pulled away from her, though his hands didn’t leave her sides. Sandor gazed at her face, trying to see if he could read it, but the words had felt genuine and the look in her own eyes wasn’t misleading. His brow wrinkled with the effort of thought as he tried to push words back into his brain, and the first thing that came out of his mouth was, “This isn’t because I bought you a necklace, is it?”

 

Instead of being hurt over his question, Sansa laughed in a half happy and half painful manner. Her hand came up touch her mouth with her fingers, and she stared out at him with shining eyes as she shook her head. “No,” Sansa said from behind her fingers, and then she lowered her hand. “I saw you buy it,” she told him softly.

 

“Oh,” was all Sandor could say in response to that.

 

Sansa took another deep breath. “I realized it out on the boulevard, though,” she went on to say, her voice shaking somewhat. “When you pulled my hair out from under my shawl, and your hands were so gentle with me. Your hands are always so gentle, and I realized it, but I don’t know how I know. I’ve never loved anyone bef—”

 

Before she could finish the last word of her sentence, Sandor grasped the back of her head and pulled her towards him for a crushing kiss. Sansa made a sharp noise of surprise, but she parted her lips against his insistence, and Sandor deepened the kiss with his tongue as he leaned her back upon the couch. He lay down on top of her, holding himself up with one arm against the cushion. Her hands roved over his sides, up his shirt and down again, and she ran them underneath his shirt over the warm skin of his back.

 

His free hand and his mouth wanted to travel, though, so Sandor let them roam further down her body. His mouth drifted to her neck, and he felt his hand slide down to her jeans. Instinctively, he realized what he wanted to do—and it wasn’t sex, but some deeper desire to bring her higher in a way he knew he was good at and knew he could do for Sansa. However, Sandor pulled his hand back and controlled the urge. It would only upset Sansa if he went for her pants again, even if it had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with just wanting to make her feel good. She hadn’t told him she had wanted to go any further yet, and he needed to remember that. His problem was he had no idea how to check his emotions, and once the gate opened up, Sandor had a hard time getting it shut again.

 

Sansa barely seemed to notice, though. She was so focused on his lips upon her neck that it didn’t register for her, his hand on the waistband of her jean shorts. Sandor felt the cold tickle of the pearl necklace against his chin, and he slowly stopped kissing her to pull back from her neck. Taking a deep breath to calm himself down, Sandor stared down at Sansa’s face for a moment. Her eyes opened slowly, and she smiled back up at him with a look of calm contentment in her expression. Sansa reached up to touch the side of his face with her hand, and Sandor leaned into her palm, never breaking eye contact with her gaze.

 

“Tell me again,” he said in a quiet voice, staring down at her. He wanted to hear those words one more time without experiencing any doubt in his reaction to them. Sansa appeared to be a little puzzled, though, and she tilted her head to the side as she looked up at him. Her face was marked with a mild amusement as well.

 

“What?” Sansa asked softly, not quite catching on to what he meant by that.

 

Sandor leaned closer to her so that his breath washed over her lips. “Tell me again,” he repeated with a deeper tone to his voice, and Sansa understood what he meant this time, so she released a shaky breath against his mouth before answering him.

 

“I love you,” she whispered, and Sandor caught the words as he came down to kiss her again. Her hands both rose to rake themselves through his short hair and over his scalp, sending pleasant tingles down his spine to his back and shoulders. It was a leisurely kiss this time, and the touch of their lips began to slow until it came to an end. Sandor moved his body into the corner of the couch, settling against the back of it, and pulled her close against him with one arm over her body and the other one underneath her, coming up around her to hold her back. The arm underneath her had the danger of going numb after a while, but right now, Sandor didn’t really care. The only thing he cared about was the young woman in his arms.

 

Sandor wasn’t sure if he had ever expected her to say those words back to him. In all likelihood he hadn’t expected anything, simply because things like that couldn’t be forced. It was terrifying to feel it, to have it for her, and to not know if she would ever feel quite the same way about him, but Sandor thought that was mostly because he had never felt this way before in his life. Being older and experienced didn’t mean he had ever loved a woman, and he hadn’t ever even considered the emotion until now. Sansa was everything opposite to him, and yet in a way, she was going through the same thing as him. It was all so very new for her, too, if her admittance was anything to go by. In a way, though, Sandor liked that.

 

Maybe she wasn’t a first for him in the physical sense, but that hardly seemed to matter to Sandor. The physical wasn’t important to him. It didn’t matter. Even if Sansa had been a bit older and hadn’t been a virgin, it still wouldn’t have made a difference to him. In fact, her being a virgin was kind of scary to Sandor sometimes if he let himself think about it. Sandor had never been with a virgin before. Maybe because they were rare in this day and age, but Sandor had also never sought out that type of woman. Purity and sweetness had never been attracting factors to him in the past. The types of women he had been attracted to were often women with some experience under their belts. On top of that, his first time wasn’t even with a virgin.

 

It made him worry for some strange reason if he ever let his thoughts veer in that direction. For instance, if they ever had sex one day, what if he hurt her? Unintentionally, of course, but Sandor had always heard that for most girls it hurt the first time. What if he hurt her, and what if she didn’t like it? What if it turned her off of the idea of sex altogether? Sandor couldn’t imagine trying to have sex with someone while they were in pain. The thought alone was very discomforting, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to do something like that. It made him glad he had never had sex with a virgin before because, honestly, it sounded horrifying. If there was pain and blood, it made it sound a little bit too much like something non-consensual, and that turned Sandor’s stomach upside down with sickness.

 

After everything Sansa had been through with that prick, Joffrey, hurting her, Sandor couldn’t willingly imagine himself doing something like that to her and hurting her more. It was unfathomable to him. So maybe, just maybe, a tiny part of his brain had wished some teenage boy had already gone through that with Sansa so he didn’t have to. On the negative side, Sandor would have probably wanted to kill that boy right along with Joffrey for hurting Sansa, so really, it was a lose-lose situation either way. His thoughts on all of that were another reason why he had wanted to wait when it came to sex in their relationship. While he was worried about her, it was also more of a personal reason for himself. Sandor wasn’t sure he could handle going over that hurdle, but at least for now, he didn’t have to worry about it.

 

Somehow these feelings made it more important to Sandor to protect her than to try and have sex with her. If the feelings weren’t there, Sandor doubted very much he would have hung around this long. Usually, he had one thing that he had wanted of women, and it was pretty simple to get it. Once he had it, he was gone, but caring about Sansa’s thoughts and feelings, her fears and insecurities, her youth, and her past abuse made everything opposite of what it used to be for him. The whole scale was flipped over and had spilled itself onto the floor, and it was intimidating and sometimes frightening, but Sandor wanted to do right by her—and he knew, in his heart, what he used to do was wrong.

 

He didn’t want to repeat his past with Sansa. He didn’t want to ever not think about her feelings or care about her thoughts. He didn’t want to ever use her for any reason whatsoever, not after she had been used by Joffrey and disrespected in a way that even Sandor had never done with a woman. He might not have had the kindest tongue with the nicest words, and he certainly hadn’t cared if he had pissed women off in the past, but he had never raised his hand to one. There had been a time or two when he had to fight women off in his old line of work because even women played dirty along with the boys sometimes, but that was different. Sandor fought to subdue in those cases, not to beat the shit out of them, and that didn’t count.

 

In the shop on the boulevard when she had been trying on the necklace, Sandor had been thinking then just how different this relationship was for him. On the one hand, he was scared of it like a teenage boy with nervous hands and sweaty palms and thoughts running a thousand miles a minute. It made him uneasy and uncomfortable, but everything about it was so new to Sandor that it was obvious why he was feeling that way in the first place. On the other hand, he was glad for it. He wanted it. He wanted Sansa. She made him happy at the same time that she scared the shit out of him, and it was strange that a young woman could do that to Sandor and not even realize the sway she had over him. Sandor shared so much with her sometimes, and that terrified him because he never knew what she would do with that information.

 

Of course, he had trouble imagining sweet and innocent Sansa using her sway over him to hurt him, but anything was possible. If she ever grew tired of him or upset with him, she could do anything she wanted in response. She might have been young, and she might have been inexperienced, but Sansa had the ability to crush Sandor into a pile of dust if she willed it. That thought made him clutch onto her a little tighter than before, and it caused Sansa to finally lift her head and look up at him with a question in her bright blue eyes, a curiosity he didn’t know if he could sake without revealing too much again. He told her so much, Sandor thought. Sometimes he thought he ought to bite his tongue from time to time.

 

As he gazed back at her, though, Sandor raised the arm he had resting over her body in order to bring his hand to her face. He touched her gently, stroking back her hair from her ear with just the tips of his fingers, and Sansa leaned into his touch, her eyes drifting to a close again at the pleasant sensations it evoked in her. She sighed softly and leaned forward to press her mouth against his chest, and through his shirt, she placed a chaste kiss against it. She pulled away just enough to speak to him without looking up again.

 

“You are so sweet to me,” she said in barely a whisper. “Sometimes I think it’s so strange, that I can’t understand how you’ve gone from what you used to be to how you are now, but then I think it doesn’t really matter, I guess.” Sandor felt her hand on his chest, pressing flat upon his muscles, and then running over them. “I have so much trouble sometimes,” Sansa went on in her quiet voice, and she reached up to take his hand into hers and bring it down between their chests. Sandor watched in silence as she examined his hand with interest, running her fingers along it, rubbing her thumb against his palm as he held it open for her touch. “Imagining these hands of yours,” she said, “killing people. Hurting them. Doing all of those horrible things . . . ”

 

Sandor sensed it as his heart seized up with discomfort at her words, feeling as if she was mocking him or taunting him with them, but some part of him knew that she was doing no such thing. It wasn’t like Sansa to do something like that, and so he took a deep breath to will away the sudden dip of fear in his heart that she was about to say something regarding all of that, something that he didn’t want to hear. Something that would hurt him. Sandor tried to will it away of his own accord, but the only thing that could calm down the ache in his heart were the next words out of her mouth.

 

“And then,” she whispered even more softly than before, “you touch me with such kindness and gentleness and goodness, and I know that whatever you used to do, you’re not that person anymore . . . ” Sansa’s thumb stilled against his palm, and she looked up to meet his gaze, her eyes glimmering with a thin layer of water that didn’t fall when she blinked her eyes. “And I know because of that I can trust you, and I know because of that you were honest when you said you loved me, and I think without that I don’t know that I would have ever figured those things out . . . ”

 

Sandor wasn’t sure why such a simple admission from her lips affected him more than her saying those three little words back to him, but somehow it did. Maybe it was the honesty or the trust involved with saying it, but it was more than Sandor had ever shared with another human being outside of Elder Brother before, and this, of course, was on a completely different level. Sandor took a very deep breath, and then he blinked his eyes, and he felt the hot tears escaping down the corner of his eye onto the couch. Here he was, descending into an emotional boy again instead of a fucking man, and all because of the sway she had over him and the feelings he had developed for her.

 

Sansa had somehow become his world, and at times, it was a very disconcerting feeling, even when it was the best in the world.

 

She smiled tenderly at his reaction, reaching up to kiss his chin with her delicate lips. “I like it when you cry, too,” she admitted in her whisper, like they were sharing deep, dark secrets that no one else should hear. “Men are so afraid to cry. They think it makes them look weak, I guess, but whenever you do it, I know that you feel something underneath all of this. I know that I matter to you, even if I sometimes don’t always remember that. I think it’s just because I’m scared, though. I’m scared, but I know that you’re scared, too, so it makes it easier to deal with it when I know that.”

 

Sandor looked down, taking his eyes out of her gaze. He breathed in deeply a few times in a row, trying to calm himself and still the erratic beating of his heart. It felt like it was going haywire in his chest, and despite how good this was supposed to be to hear all of this from her, it was scaring the shit out of him. It was one thing, Sandor thought, having feelings for her and expecting them to not be returned. In a way he was still guarding himself by believing it was one-sided and that she wouldn’t say the words back to him, but to hear her open up her heart and bare it before him like this, Sandor was scared out of his mind. Because if she truly felt all of this and he let himself _believe_ it, then he wasn’t in control of the situation anymore. She was, and Sansa could retract those feelings at anytime and ruin him.

 

Sansa must have noticed something was wrong. Her hand roved over his chest, rubbing in a gentle calming motion, trying to bring him back down again. “Sandor?” she whispered, and there was the smallest trace of panic in her voice. “Sandor, is everything all right? You’re shaking . . . ”

 

Sandor wanted to push himself up from the couch and leave his apartment immediately and go for a walk until he couldn’t recognize the street names anymore, but some tiny part of his brain rooted him there in his spot. Because if he got up and stormed out on her, Sansa would lose all of that trust she had built up for him, cry herself into a pile on the floor, and never speak to him again. She would think he finally didn’t want her anymore, not if he had to deal with her _loving_ him, and she would think all of it was a lie—and he would never be able to convince her again that it wasn’t if he just got up and left like that.

 

So, instead of running from it like he wanted to do and pretending he wasn’t having a breakdown, Sandor let himself go ahead and have the breakdown. He put his arm back around her body and clutched her tight, feeling his body shake with every sharp pang and ache inside him from every negative thought and possible outcome of their relationship. He went ahead and let it consume him whole, breathing heavily through his clenched teeth as more hot tears spilled down his cheek onto the cushion below his head. Sandor let every fear that Elder Brother was afraid would eat him whole course right through his veins all at once, and he felt like a man shaking from a seizure, but Sansa didn’t get up from the couch to get away from him. She didn’t answer any of his fears at all.

 

Instead, she lay there with him, clutching her arm around his larger frame and pressing her face to his collarbone, breathing in and out against it. Her breathing was much calmer than his, but also a little ragged, though she never let go of him or asked him to loosen his hold on her. Sansa let him clutch onto her and hold her until his arms were sore from the effort, and finally, they subsided from their grip around her body, and the shakes seemed to be gone from his bones, and he began to breathe shallowly in the aftermath of the hurricane he had just experienced inside of his soul.

 

And Sansa just breathed on quietly beside him, having weathered the storm, as she lay there peacefully in his arms.

 

 


	54. I Used to Know You So Well

_* * *_

 

Loras wasn’t on duty today, so he wasn’t dressed in uniform. His clothing was simple from his blue and white plaid button down shirt to his favorite pair of faded blue jeans with a hole in one of the knees, and finally, to a worn out old pair of trainers that had seen better days. There were times when Loras liked to dress up and look polished outside of his work uniform, but today, he didn’t really feel like it. With everything going on between Sandor and Renly, Loras didn’t want to look like a presumptuous tool as he headed over to Sandor’s apartment. He had an idea in his head of what he hoped to accomplish by talking to Sandor in private without Renly being involved with it, but that didn’t mean Loras’s idea would come to fruition. For starters, if Sandor wanted to slam the door in his face, then Sandor was going to slam the door in his face, and there was nothing Loras could do about it.

 

He hoped, though, that Sandor hadn’t gotten to that point with him yet. After all, Renly’s deeds were not Loras’s deeds, and it wouldn’t be fair of Sandor to put the responsibility of them onto Loras as well. Loras couldn’t control Renly. It wasn’t like he owned a remote control that guided around Renly’s actions and daily decisions. Renly was his own person, and he was going to make his own decisions, regardless of what other people thought of them. Sometimes even regardless of what Loras thought of them. Loras could give Renly advice and hope it was heeded, and he could fight with Renly and yell at him until he was blue in the face, but that was about the extent of his power over his boyfriend. He wasn’t a puppet master, and he wasn’t going to play at being one.

 

When he wasn’t doing his job, Loras was a pretty honest guy. He had begun to feel some guilt over everything going on with their plan against Jaime Lannister because Loras worked with Jaime on a daily basis. While the guy could be an uptight prick at times, Jaime didn’t seem to be the person he used to be anymore. Whatever had made Jaime a dirty cop didn’t have sway over him these days as far as Loras could tell, and Jaime played by the rulebook more so than a lot of the other officers on the force. Loras didn’t want to respect the guy or look up to him in any way, but some part of him did, and it conflicted with everything else going on behind the scenes with him and Renly. Nevertheless, Loras continued to play the smartass rookie at work mostly because it was expected of him, and his conscience was starting to wear thin with every day that passed him by.

 

Pushing aside his conflicted feelings regarding Lannister was a bit easier than pushing aside what had happened between Sandor and Renly, though. Renly was never going to approach Sandor and talk to him reasonably about what had happened that day with Sansa over the phone, and Loras wasn’t even going to pretend to apologize for Renly. That wasn’t something you could just apologize for and expect things to become better after the apology. It wasn’t going to fix it. Renly had crossed a line with that shit, and Loras was aware of that. However, there were some things that Loras needed to say to Sandor to make them clear to the other man. A face-to-face conversation was the only way to do that, so when Loras reached the front door to Sandor’s apartment, he steeled himself against the possibility of an unwelcoming or angry Sandor on the other side of the door and raised his hand to knock three times in a row.

 

When it opened up, Sandor stood there on the other side with his hand on top of the knob, looking out at Loras with a small degree of confusion written across his features. Aside from that, he did not particularly look upset at the sight of Loras standing outside of his apartment. However, Sandor didn’t move away from the doorway to let Loras pass through, and he didn’t look like he was entertaining the idea of inviting Loras inside for something to drink.

 

“What are you doing here?” Sandor asked flatly, and it erased all doubt.

 

Loras cleared his throat and swallowed before speaking to make sure he didn’t stumble over any of his words. After all, this wasn’t easy for him. “I thought we could, uh, talk,” Loras offered kindly, trying to let Sandor know this wasn’t about business but about something a lot more personal than that.

 

Sandor narrowed his eyes as he considered Loras’s request. It took a moment before he stepped back from the doorway without saying anything, pulling the door open further as he stepped back to let Loras pass by him. Loras took the invitation to enter before Sandor changed his mind, and walked inside of Sandor’s apartment. The man could afford to live somewhere better than this. As Loras looked around the place, he realized just how small it was for the first time in a long while. Sandor made good money owning and running a pub in the center of the city, but he chose to live in a small apartment with one bed, one bath, a connected kitchen and living room, and maybe one small storage room at the end of the hall. It wasn’t much, though it wasn’t unkempt. Sandor’s life used to be a mess, but at least his home had always been clean and not filthy.

 

Loras hadn’t really been to Sandor’s apartment all that much, though. He had seen it a few times recently, of course, but that was about it. Sandor used to live in a nice house much bigger than this small corner-sized apartment. While Sandor probably hadn’t needed all of that space and that might have been the reason why he had moved out of it, Loras didn’t understand why Sandor didn’t just get a smaller house instead of moving into a tiny apartment on a dingy side of town. The place was sparsely furnished, too, and there wasn’t a single piece of decoration anywhere. Not one picture frame or mirror hung on the walls, nothing at all to give the place the unique feeling of being a home. It just looked like a place where someone lived day to day, and there was nothing special about it. There weren’t even any shelves on the walls for books. If minimalism was his goal, then Sandor had succeeded with flying colors.

 

Taking a seat in the only chair that Sandor had in his apartment, Loras looked up just as Sandor was walking into the kitchen. Sandor opened the refrigerator and grabbed a glass from within it, heading back into the living room and sitting down on the couch. It looked like plain water in a clear glass cup. Sandor took a heavy swig of it like it was alcohol, though, and then he lowered the glass and used both of his hands to hold it. His fingers tapped against the cup as he looked directly over at Loras. The chair was off to the left side of the couch, so Sandor had to turn his head to get a good look, but his gaze was hard and his eyes were cold. If his expression told Loras anything, it was that he didn’t want Loras to be here for very long and he wasn’t very happy about him being here in the first place.

 

“Well,” Sandor said tersely, “you wanted to talk, so talk.”

 

“Are you just going to keep treating me like I’m Renly?” Loras asked all of a sudden, but he managed to keep his voice calm when he said it. He had just blurted it out because of Sandor’s tone. This was just the sort of thing he had been thinking about on the way here—how Sandor acted like Loras was somehow responsible for all Renly’s actions and decisions. It was as if Sandor expected Loras to have some sort of power to control Renly or bring about these things in him, and it wasn’t fair to Loras. Loras and Renly were two separate people, whether they were in a relationship together or not.

 

“You’re with him, aren’t you?” Sandor threw back, cocking his head to the side. His standoffish behavior spoke volumes all by itself. Sandor had never treated Loras this way in the past, not for any reason whatsoever, so it was new and uncomfortable, but Loras didn’t want to give up this early on in talking to the guy. In all of the years that he had known him, Loras had never given up on Sandor before, and he wasn’t going to start now.

 

“How would you like it, Sandor,” Loras began, “if I held Sansa accountable for your actions and words all of the time? Would that be fair to her simply because she’s with you? Should I judge her for all of your misdeeds?”

 

Loras had picked Sansa out of all of the possible examples he could have named because he knew Sansa meant something to Sandor, whether the man admitted anything out loud about it or not. He watched closely for Sandor’s reaction, so when Sandor’s fingers clenched around the glass he held between his hands and his expression tightened uncomfortably at the mention of her name, Loras knew his words had some kind of impact.

 

“That’s different,” Sandor said, but he sounded unsure compared to the firmness of his tone just moments ago.

 

“No, it’s not different,” Loras reasoned. “Everything wrong that you have done should not be put onto Sansa just because she’s with you. She’s a decent girl. She doesn’t deserve that just because she has feelings for you. It’s not her fault what you’ve done or what you choose to do, so how is my relationship with Renly any different than that?”

 

Sandor’s mouth drew into a thin line, and Loras saw as the other man’s nose twitched with the effort to keep a steady face when a part of him wanted to get angry. He was looking ahead at nothing in particular, refusing to meet Loras’s gaze. Usually, when Sandor refused to meet someone’s gaze, it was because he knew what they were saying was true. Sandor had no trouble confronting lies. It was the truth coming from people that he had the problem with every now and then, especially if it proved him wrong. Sandor didn’t like to be proven wrong because he liked to act like he knew everything about everyone’s motivations and reasoning. If someone surprised him, it upset the man. Sandor often had trouble with facing those sort of truths in the past, and Loras remembered that about him very well.

 

The other man’s silence caused Loras to slowly nod his head in response, and he looked up at one of the windows in Sandor’s apartment. “I’m not going to try and apologize for what Renly did,” Loras told him, “because it would be bullshit. Renly can deal with his own fuck ups. You ought to know, though, that Renly wouldn’t have actually hurt Sansa. I know that was a threat. I think we all know what a threat sounds like when we hear one, but that’s all it was to him—words. If you don’t believe that, and I can understand if you don’t, then believe that if he had tried I would have stopped him.”

 

Loras glanced over to gauge Sandor’s reaction to his words. It might have been only a small step forward, but Sandor’s hands loosened upon the glass between his palms and fingers until he was just holding it again instead of clutching it, and then Sandor took a deep breath to relax his taut nerves. Loras watched as Sandor raised the glass of water to his mouth for another drink, and once he lowered it again, it looked as though nothing had been bothering him at all. It was as if Sandor had hit a switch in his brain to hide his true reaction away from sight.

 

“Tell me you at least still believe in that,” Loras said, finding his voice quieter than before. “You saved my life, you know. Your crazy brother almost killed me, and you saved my fucking life. I owe a lot to you, Sandor. Maybe that’s why I’ve tried for so long to help you out of so much shit. I don’t know, but I do know I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for you, and I’ve never forgotten that. No matter how much I do, I never feel like I’m going to make up for what you’ve done for me. We were friends once, good fucking friends, and all of this shit has gotten in the way of it. I’m tired of it. I want us to be friends again. Maybe not like we used to be because you don’t drink anymore, but that’s cool. We don’t have to down a fucking bottle together to hang out.”

 

Loras fell silent after that, not knowing quite what else to say. He didn’t want to get all emotional in front of Sandor because the guy tended to mock those kinds of things. Loras wondered, however, with this new young lady in Sandor’s life if the man acted differently when people weren’t around him and her. It would have been interesting, Loras thought, to see Sandor under a different light than the harsh, isolated one he was so familiar with seeing painted upon Sandor. Even here in the present, that was what Loras saw when he looked at Sandor. He saw a man withdrawn from the world that didn’t care much for it outside of the necessary interactions, and Sandor’s rough edges were still jagged and sharp despite his reformed behavior.

 

“You would stop your own boyfriend,” Sandor mocked him, “just to protect a girl?” Sandor had raised his eyes to meet Loras’s gaze, and Loras looked dead on at the other man without flinching away from it. A short measure of silence passed between them as Loras waited to see if Sandor would say more. When it didn’t look like Sandor was going to add anything else to that, Loras finally answered him.

 

“I would stop him,” Loras said firmly, “to help a friend.”

 

Sandor turned away from him again. His mouth twisted with some inward effort to accept the words at face value, though he wanted to distrust them. Loras could tell with every fiber of Sandor’s being that the man wanted to distrust them. Suddenly, Sandor got up from the couch. He walked back into the kitchen to pour out his glass and put it in the sink, and then he turned around and leaned against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest and staring over at Loras sitting in his living room.

 

“So, you want to be friends again, is that it?” Sandor asked, but he didn’t sound too welcoming of the idea.

 

“I want to try,” Loras admitted to him, but then he shook his head because it didn’t seem like that was going to be enough for Sandor. He tried to remove some of the tension in the room with a light-hearted remark, hoping it would help. “I know it won’t be easy,” Loras added, “given our history and now with current events, but we’re both big boys here. I think we can handle ourselves like men.”

 

“What if I don’t trust you,” Sandor suggested slowly, “or your boyfriend?”

 

Loras looked down at the carpet before his feet and sighed. He had his elbows resting on his knees and his hands folded together in front of himself, and his hands twisted together nervously. Loras had known this wasn’t going to be easy, so he swallowed past the dryness in his throat, and then he found himself shaking his head again. “I can’t make you trust me,” Loras said, glancing up again to look directly at Sandor. “Either you trust my word or you don’t. I can’t make you, and I’m definitely not going to try. That’s your decision, big guy. You can crush me like a bug, so there’s no reason for me to try and pull a fast one over your eyes. You’ll fuck me up faster than that brother of yours.” Loras tried to smile at this, but it came out forced and halfway broken, so he sighed again and pushed himself up from the chair.

 

If this wasn’t going according to plan and Sandor didn’t want them to be friends again, then Loras knew he couldn’t force Sandor to listen to him. All he could do was make the offer of friendship again, and if it wasn’t accepted, then all he could do was walk away from it. Loras didn’t want to walk away, but he could always come back at a later time after he had given Sandor some more space. Maybe he could wait for this whole job to blow over, and then Sandor might be more willing to hear him out. If Sandor didn’t trust him, though, Loras wasn’t sure if there was a remedy for that problem. Loras hadn’t done anything to compromise Sandor’s trust, but his boyfriend had, and it was like Sandor expected Loras to choose between the two of them. Loras wasn’t going to choose. He had admitted that he didn’t agree with Renly’s bullshit. He admitted that he didn’t support it, but that didn’t mean he was going to leave Renly over it. If that was what Sandor expected, then it simply wasn’t going to happen.

 

Sandor narrowed his eyes as Loras rose from the chair, though his expression didn’t soften. “Are you leaving already?” he asked.

 

“Do you want me to?” Loras questioned him back, not sure why he was asking. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to hear the answer to that. Sandor probably wanted him out of here. Even though they had a history, Loras wasn’t so sure if it was going to survive this hurdle Renly had placed between the three of them. Sandor remained leaning against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest. For the longest time, he just stared back at Loras and didn’t say anything.

 

“You can stay,” Sandor said blankly, like it didn’t matter to him one way or another what Loras chose to do, but Sandor wouldn’t have said it like that if he had wanted Loras to just be gone. Loras took this as a good sign, and he pursed his lips together as he nodded his head and moved to sit down in the chair again.

 

“I’d like to stay for a bit,” Loras answered in his best casual voice, “if that’s cool.”

 

Sandor didn’t say anything again, and he didn’t even nod his head in acceptance, but he walked out of the kitchen and back to the living room to sit down on the couch. He appeared to be more at ease than before, and when he glanced up at Loras, he had an interesting question on his mind that Loras hadn’t expected him to ask.

 

“I know I’m in on the other plan you’ve got going on,” Sandor said in a low voice, “but what exactly is going to happen to those files I helped get? Are they going to be released to the public?”

 

Loras shrugged his shoulders, wondering why Sandor would ask such a question in the first place. His curiosity must have been getting the better of him. “Why do you want to know?” Loras asked, though it wasn’t said as if he intended to hide the information from Sandor. Loras was just curious about Sandor’s motivation for asking.

 

“I’ve just been thinking about it,” Sandor said, sitting back against the couch.

 

Loras wondered if it was Sandor’s conscience again, but he trusted Sandor to keep the information to himself, as did Renly, so there was no point in not sharing it with him. “It’s going to be used as blackmail against Jaime to get him to agree to a deal once the files on his dirty work come to light and he’s arrested,” Loras revealed to him. “The idea is to get him with the dirty work, pigeonhole him, and then scare him into a deal that seals the fate of Tywin, Kevan, and Tygett. They’ll lose their offices, and maybe they’ll go away for a very long time. Obviously, Tywin will be out of the running for Prime Minister, and—”

 

“Your father, Mace Tyrell, becomes the next runner up,” Sandor finished for him slowly.

 

“Pretty much,” Loras affirmed, nodding his head in agreement.

 

“What’s in it for you?” Sandor asked. “A fat pay raise?”

 

Loras pursed his lips. “Well, climbing up the promotional ladder will be easier,” he admitted, raising his eyebrows. “Though I can do that all on my own, a little push doesn’t hurt.”

 

“What was the point in getting those files if the real targets were Tywin, Kevan, and Tygett?” Sandor inquired next, and he seemed genuinely interested in the answer to that.

 

“Jaime might not be so keen on giving up his family,” Loras told him. “I mean, you have to think about it. He’s a changed man. He might take the fall for his father and uncles. Then again, he may not. The blood work on him and his niece and nephews will offer a good push to scare him, though. He could still recover through a deal, though he’ll lose his job over all of this. His life won’t be over. Just in case he decides to act noble and take the fall, we have the files on his family as a backup to get to our real targets—Tywin, Kevan, and Tygett. Jaime can get out of this with nothing but a ruined reputation if he cooperates.”

 

“It’s an ambitious plan,” Sandor said quietly.

 

“Yes, it is,” Loras agreed. “It’s a very ambitious plan, and lots of things can go wrong, which is why we needed a good crew to make sure it gets done properly.”

 

“You haven’t gotten the files from the precinct yet?”

 

“Not yet,” Loras said. “Tyene and Sarella will be getting those very soon, though. Once they have them, we forward the documents you helped us to get to our contact within the district attorney’s office. Things will fall into place after that. Jaime will be arrested, and our guy will help make him see the self-preservation in making a deal.”

 

“What if he doesn’t want to make a deal,” Sandor suggested, “and he still takes the fall?”

 

Loras was quiet for a moment. “I think he’ll make the deal,” he said.

 

“I don’t know,” Sandor offered, “turning in your whole family is a big thing to ask anyone to do.”

 

“Jaime hates his father,” Loras said. “I think he’ll hesitate and refuse at first, but I think to save his own skin from prison time and humiliation, he’ll agree to the deal.”

 

“You hope,” Sandor told Loras, correcting him.

 

Loras cracked a small smile at Sandor’s words. “Yes, I hope.”

 

“So,” Sandor continued on, and if Loras’s ears didn’t deceive him, he almost sounded sad about the prospect, “no tabloid gossip rags will be spouting off about Jaime’s incestuous relationship with his sister? Or the three kids she had because of his dick?”

 

Loras snorted in amusement. “Maybe not,” he said.

 

“Damn,” Sandor threw back casually, “and here I was hoping to read about my handiwork.” Despite the joke in his tone, Loras heard what almost sounded like some kind of measure of relief in Sandor’s voice, and he wondered at that, but he didn’t let his mind linger on it.

 

Pushing aside his thoughts, though, Loras stood up from the chair and suggested, “Why don’t we get out of this stuffy apartment of yours, eh? I’m sure there are better places for us to mouth off at each other.”

 

“Sure,” Sandor said after a moment, “but I’m driving this time.” He gave Loras a pointed look that said there was no room for argument over that request.

 

Loras grinned at him. “Deal,” he said.

 

 


	55. It’s a Revolution, I Suppose

_* * *_

 

Since they weren’t out on patrol today, it was just another ordinary day at the precinct. It was obvious that it was just another ordinary day at the precinct because Jaime and Loras had been bickering as usual, and then Jaime had agreed to arm wrestle Loras after the younger man had submitted the challenge. Brienne had decided to walk the office and take everyone’s bets on who was going to win. Before Jaime knew it, he and Loras were sitting down at a table, sleeves rolled up, elbows down, and hands locked. They were surrounded by a huge circle of people, which included Brienne and Varys, and everyone was hollering, cheering, jeering, and waving their fists in the air. Some people were still throwing money down for bets, and Brienne was doing the collecting on that.

 

Jaime swore he felt a bead of sweat slide down the side of his temple, and he gritted his teeth as Loras began to get the upper hand, which resulted in more screaming—some of it good, and some of it bad. It depended who they were betting on. The muscles in Loras’s arm bulged with the effort he was putting into it, his face a tight, pursed mask that was slowly turning red. Jaime could feel the burn of his own muscles screaming against the pressure placed upon them. This was only the first round, and neither of them had gotten the other man’s hand down against the table yet. They were battling each other, an ancient and manly practice of machoism, but the crowd around them was starting to get impatient.

 

“This isn’t fucking hand holding time!” someone yelled out. “Get _to_ it! C’mon!”

 

Jaime felt a sudden surge of power in his arm, and then he pushed with all of his might. Effectively, he pinned Loras’s hand against the table with a resounding _thunk_. The crowd went wild, hooting and hollering, and some of them swore out loud as they stormed off to hit something, while others were jumping in place, high fiving each other, and collecting their money triumphantly. Loras’s face was red, though not from embarrassment, and he knocked his elbow down on the table with a loud noise to draw everyone’s attention back to him. The racket of the crowd faded away as Loras held his arm upward at the elbow again, his hand extended out as if awaiting someone to grasp it.

 

“Rematch,” Loras said quietly, staring across the table at Jaime with dark eyes.

 

Jaime felt a grin twitch at the corner of his mouth, and he bit down onto his bottom lip. The grin became a smirk, and he placed his elbow down onto the table with the same amount of force as Loras had used, inciting a few murmurs through the crowd of onlookers. Jaime propped his arm upright upon the table’s surface as well, and he positioned his hand just across from Loras’s hand without actually grasping it yet.

 

“Deal,” Jaime said in a calm voice, and the smirk became a grin once more before he settled his face into a stoic expression as the crowd began to cheer again.

 

“Bets!” Brienne called out. “Make your bets!”

 

Loras reached out and grasped Jaime’s hand with a tight grip. It was so firm that both of their knuckles turned white from the pressure. Their gazes locked across the table, eyes boring into each other with such an intensity that Jaime could sense the raw determination emanating off of Loras. For this round, things were a lot more serious. Last time was a joke to get everybody riled up with laughs, but this time Loras meant it. He wanted to prove himself against Jaime. The boy had been trying to do that ever since he stepped foot into this joint over a year ago. Sometimes Jaime got the sense that Loras respected him, but other times it felt like Loras wanted nothing better to do than to knock Jaime down onto the floor and kick him a few times for good measure.

 

Jaime ignored the jeers of the crowd, focusing solely on the task before him as Brienne put her hand down onto the table.

 

“All right, boys,” she said, looking between the two of them, which Jaime could see out of the corner of his eyes. He refused to take his eyes off of Loras to look back at her. “On the count of three . . . ” Brienne didn’t have to explain herself further, though. They both knew what she meant. She raised her hand, patting it down against the table. “One,” she called out. She raised her hand again and patted it down a second time. “Two,” she called out, her voice louder than before. On the third time, Brienne slapped her hand down against the table hard enough to cause it to rattle, and hollered out, “ _Go!_ ”

 

They fought even tougher this time. Their muscles strained against the pressure, their faces both gritting hard against the force they put behind each arm. With ghostly white knuckles and reddening faces, they struggled until Loras slammed Jaime’s hand down against the table, and a new wave of cheers and jeers erupted from the crowd. Loras let go of Jaime’s hand, slapped his hand down hard against the table, and stood up to accept the praise of their co-workers. Jaime wasn’t angry that Loras had won this round, but at the same time, he didn’t want to let it go that easily.

 

“Best of out three,” Jaime called out with a firm note of determination in his tone, proposing yet another challenge to the younger man.

 

The cheering and talking turned into a chorus of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ at the prospect of more. Loras slowly turned his head to look back at Jaime, an amused gleam in his eyes. He was moving to sit down again, just about to accept the challenge, when a new voice called out from behind the crowd of bodies, “What is going on here?”

 

Everyone turned around at the voice, and those in the crowd who could slink away without being seen immediately began to disperse throughout the office and act busy again. Jaime and Loras had no such chance, and when the crowd parted to let the Chief Inspector through, Jaime and Loras immediately stood up from their chairs at the table to stand at attention.

 

Chief Inspector Barristan Selmy narrowed his eyes at the sight of Jaime and Loras with their sleeves rolled up, and he slowly glanced between both men like their disheveled appearance insulted him. Chief Inspector Selmy was a tall man in his sixties with buzzed white hair and sharp blue eyes. He was a very respectable man who took his job a little too seriously, and he didn’t appreciate fooling around on the clock. Selmy knew they had heard his initial question, so he didn’t repeat himself. Instead, he waited for one of them to answer him.

 

“We were arm wrestling, sir,” Loras answered him, fessing up to their misdeeds before Jaime could do it.

 

“And taking bets, it looks like,” Selmy said with a measure of distaste.

 

“Yes, sir,” Jaime admitted before Loras could do it again.

 

“You,” Selmy said, looking at Loras, “I expect it from.” He turned his head to look at Jaime next, raising his eyebrows. “I expect better from you, Lannister. You’ve been here a lot longer than Tyrell. You should set an example.”

 

“Yes, sir,” Jaime repeated himself.

 

“You’re dismissed, Tyrell,” Selmy told Loras without looking at him.

 

“Yes, sir,” Loras said quickly, and he walked off before anything else could be said to him. Jaime inwardly fumed at the injustice. This was just great. Loras got off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist because he was younger and he hadn’t been on the force for that long, and Jaime was the one who was going to get the real smackdown from Chief Inspector Selmy because he was supposed to set the example around here for the newbies.

 

“Follow me to my office, Lannister,” Selmy instructed him, and Jaime allowed himself a small and very quiet sigh when Selmy turned around and led the way to his office. Once they were inside, Selmy moved behind his desk to sit down and looked up at Jaime. He gestured at the door with his right hand. “Close the door,” Selmy ordered firmly, and Jaime did as he was bid to do. After he had shut the door to Selmy’s office, the older man then gestured at one of the empty chairs across from his desk. “Please, sit down,” he said.

 

Jaime was afraid of what was coming next, but he sat himself down in one of the stiff navy blue chairs and waited patiently for Chief Inspector Selmy to lay it out for him. However, Selmy folded his hands over his desk and surveyed Jaime with an appreciative gaze, his expression softening into that of an amused old man. Though he was old, Selmy was still a force to be reckoned with both in his office and out on the streets. The man, despite being chief inspector, kept up the rigorous physical training that was required of lower ranking officers in order to stay in shape and always be alert and aware of his surroundings. No one trained with Selmy and walked away without getting their asses kicked and kicked good. Jaime had been bested by him numerous times, and he had always told himself afterwards that next time he would win, but he never did.

 

“You probably think I’m about to scold you like you’re a little boy,” Selmy told him, and Jaime could hear the undertone of humor in Selmy’s voice. The chief even cracked the smallest of smiles, his eyes twinkling with merriment. “On the contrary, Lannister, I called you in here to tell you some good news.”

 

“What’s that, sir?” Jaime asked warily, though his curiosity was piqued.

 

“You’ve passed the exam,” Selmy announced, sounding quite happy about it, and the small smirk on his face turned into a full-blown smile, “and I’m looking at my new sergeant.”

 

Jaime inhaled a sudden, sharp breath as his eyes opened up wider, and he stared across the desk at Chief Inspector Selmy with a look of disbelief written on his face. The shellshock he felt in that moment caused him to freeze in place like a statue. He even almost forgot to breathe. Jaime had been studying for the sergeant’s exam for months in hopes of making the perfect score on the first time he took it, and he hadn’t dared to hope that he might make the actual promotion. When he remembered his lungs needed air, Jaime gulped in a heavy dose of it and grinned at Selmy, feeling a low laugh come up in his throat.

 

“This . . . ” Jaime tried to say, stumbling over his words. “This is amazing, sir.”

 

“For you, yes,” Selmy agreed, smiling back at him. “For me, I expected it of you.”

 

For Jaime to hear those words come out of Selmy’s mouth, it meant something. Selmy didn’t give praise where praise wasn’t due. If he gave out a compliment, it was a damn fine compliment and well worth the wait to hear it.

 

“You won’t regret this, Chief,” Jaime told him.

 

Selmy raised his eyebrows. “I better not,” he said.

 

Jaime grinned at the man, and he rose from his seat to extend his hand over the desk to Selmy. Selmy looked down at Jaime’s hand before he looked up at his face, and then he accepted Jaime’s hand in a firm shake with the smile still on his face.

 

“Thank you,” Jaime said, and he let go of Selmy’s hand.

 

“Now, get back to work,” Selmy told him with a pointed look, “and be sure to tell them how I tore you a new one.”

 

“Yes, sir,” Jaime said with more enthusiasm than last time, and he quickly left Chief Inspector Selmy’s office to return back to the main floor of the station. He might have even had an extra little skip in his step along the way. When he made it back, he found Loras and Brienne pouring over files together and discussing something in what looked like a fairly serious manner. Jaime approached them, sitting on the edge of the desk. Brienne was standing, and Loras was sitting down in the chair, but both of them looked up as Jaime suddenly sat down.

 

“Did he tear you a new one?” Loras asked in a quiet voice, leaning over the desk as if it would help Jaime to hear him.

 

“Ooh, yeah,” Jaime said nonchalantly. “Really painful, that one. I’ll be sore for a week.”

 

“What happened?” Brienne cut in, and Jaime looked up at her. The inquisitive expression on her face gave way to a small smile, and she squinted at him as she aimed a sideways look in his direction. “Why do you look so happy?”

 

Jaime pretended he had no idea what she meant and shrugged his shoulders. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he added, shaking his head in a casual manner, but there was a hint of teasing to his tone, and if she was listening closely, she would catch it.

 

“No, she’s right,” Loras said next, narrowing his eyes at Jaime as well. “You’ve got ‘I’m a happy idiot’ written all over your face, and you’re beating to the tune of a song against your leg.”

 

Jaime suddenly stopped patting his leg. “I am not,” he denied in a calm voice.

 

“Well, you’re not now,” Brienne said smartly, “but you were a second ago.”

 

Finally, Jaime couldn’t hold it in any longer. “I got sergeant,” he told them, slowly letting go to reveal a grin on his face with the news.

 

Brienne’s jaw dropped open. Loras’s eyes lit up, and he grinned like a fool as he stood up from the chair and grabbed Jaime into a brief hug, patting him on the back before pulling away. “Congratulations, man!” Loras exclaimed, and he clapped Jaime on the arm right below his shoulder. “We should go out drinking tonight to celebrate!”

 

Jaime opened his mouth to respond to Loras’s suggestion when his eyes caught site of something across the office. It stopped him dead in his tracks. Two women had just walked into the office with one of the officers from the station leading the way, and they were dressed in dark grey business suits. One of them wore trousers while the other one wore a pencil skirt. The one wearing trousers had dark skin and short cropped curly hair, and the other one was pale with blonde hair pulled up into a bun on the back of her head with two chopsticks going through it.

 

They were talking with somebody else, and Jaime saw the two women display their badges, and that was what brought him back to reality. “Hey, look,” Jaime said without glancing back at Brienne or Loras, and he nodded his head towards the two women showing off their badges. “Suits,” he added with a disgusted tone to his voice. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Loras and Brienne turn their heads to look as well.

 

“Fucking suits,” Loras swore, glancing away from them. “I wish they’d mind their own damn business.”

 

“You know they’ve got to snoop their noses up everyone’s arses,” Jaime quipped back, but he had lost his sudden joy over his promotion. What exactly were suits doing here, and what were they hoping to find during their visit today? Suit, of course, was the station’s derogatory term for an officer involved with internal investigations. Jaime could tell by their badges. He watched as they were led down the hallway to the left and out of sight. As they disappeared from his line of vision, their presence in the station left a bitter taste in the back of Jaime’s mouth.

 

Brienne, unlike Loras and Jaime, was unnaturally quiet on the subject. However, when Jaime turned to look at her, she appeared to be just as equally as disturbed as him. She lifted her head, and their gazes locked for one long moment, and Jaime could feel the waves of apprehension rolling off of her. Brienne broke eye contact with Jaime by looking down, and she placed the file folder she was holding onto the surface of the desk to discard it from her grip.

 

“I’m going to go see what’s going on with that Ripon case,” Brienne told both of them, and Jaime watched as she walked away without looking back again. She, too, disappeared down the hallway, but it was to the right instead of to the left this time. Jaime wondered if she was really going to go check on the Ripon case or if she had something completely different on her mind.

 

“So,” Loras drawled out, using his usually chipper voice, “do you still want to go drinking tonight for celebratory purposes?”

 

“I’ll have to think about it,” Jaime said, and he was trying his best to sound casual about it because he didn’t want to alarm Loras. He turned to the younger man, aiming a small smile in his direction. “Sometimes I get carried away when I drink, so I try not to drink much.”

 

Loras grinned. “Nothing wrong with getting a little carried away, you know,” he said to Jaime. “Sometimes it’s a good thing. Let’s you cut loose and be free.”

 

“I’ll have to get back with you later on that one,” Jaime responded, getting up from the desk. He waved a temporary farewell at Loras before he headed for the hallway, making his way through the station towards the front exit. Once he was outside, Jaime sought out his car and decided to go for a drive around the city. He fixed his sleeves on the way, making sure to roll them back down and button up the wrists to maintain a look of professionalism while outside of the station. All the while, his thoughts raced through his head.

 

It had been at least two years since Jaime had broken the rules by fudging paperwork, tampering with evidence, or fixing things up for his family. The sensible half of his brain said they weren’t here on behalf of him. Besides, he had always been careful as far as he remembered to make sure there was no evidence of his misdeeds left laying behind for anybody to pick up. Two years was a long time, too. There was no way their presence was due to him. Somebody must have been up to something recently, and now the suits were called in to investigate through some paperwork. Honestly, it was nothing. He was letting his imagination get carried away with him, and Brienne was probably doing the same thing right about now somewhere inside of the station. Jaime only hoped she didn’t let it get to her.

 

When he made it to his police car, he opened the door and settled himself into the driver seat. Jaime shut the door and turned on the department’s radio to see if there was anything currently happening in the city. Right now, the line was dead, so Jaime cranked the engine and pulled out of the parking space. Once he was on the road, he blocked out all thoughts regarding the suits and cruised down the streets at a steady pace. The city was quiet today. It had been a lot like that lately, which surprised Jaime. It was almost like somebody was taking out the trash before anyone at the station could get to it, and that was a disconcerting thought for him. He knew there were illegal operations around town, but they had never gotten to the bottom to all of them. As soon as they took down one, it seemed like a new operation cropped up to take its place. Unless some big mogul was in charge of it all and those were just pawns working for one boss, but Jaime didn’t like that thought. Still, it didn’t dismiss the possibility.

 

Over the radio, a voice crackled through the fuzz to give the code for a domestic violence dispute over at an apartment complex. Jaime turned the car around on the first street that would reroute him in the proper direction, deciding to answer the call since he was not that far from the location in question.  As he carefully weaved through the traffic, Jaime thought back to that time he had picked up Sansa by the side of the street with tears in her eyes and a torn dress in her hands, and he silently wondered what she had done with that information he had given to her about Sandor Clegane. He hoped she took it seriously and stopped seeing the guy, but he hadn’t been by the Stark residence lately because of how busy he had been with the sergeant’s exam, so there had been no opportunity to speak to her. He also hadn’t seen Sansa out anywhere with Clegane again, so maybe it was a good sign. Maybe she had listened to Jaime after all.

 

Jaime pulled up to the curb outside of the apartment complex, and when he looked up at the building, his heart froze inside of his chest and his stomach bottomed out. He had heard the name of the place over the radio with the rest of the information, but it hadn’t registered in his mind at the time. Looking up at the building through his windshield, though, Jaime knew the sight of Sandor Clegane’s apartment complex. Suddenly, there was an alert sense of fear that the call had something to do with Clegane. There had never been a domestic dispute call on the man before, but there was a first time for everything.

 

Quickly, Jaime got out of the vehicle and shut the door behind himself. The sound was loud in his ears, and it amped up the adrenaline already pumping through his veins. Jaime hurried inside, practically running, as he remembered the floor number and the room number that were reported over the radio with the rest of the information on the dispute. The floor number was also the same number as Clegane’s floor, but the room number left him unsure. Jaime couldn’t remember Clegane’s room number. It had been too long since he had visited it last to remember those small details.

 

Once Jaime reached the floor, though, Clegane was nowhere in sight. There was an open apartment door, though, and loud yelling mixed with crying coming from within. Jaime didn’t know if anybody was armed or had a weapon, so he pulled out his gun just to be safe. He crept up closer to the open door, and announced, “Police!”

 

Silence followed his announcement, so Jaime slowly drew closer towards the doorway. Even the crying had stopped, and when he came around the door, it wasn’t Clegane on the other side. It was just an unrecognizable man and woman, and Jaime tucked his out of sight gun back into its holster and discussed the situation with both of the people inside of the apartment. They insisted it was nothing, and that they were just fighting. There were no signs of a struggle inside of the apartment, and no sign of bruises or injuries on the woman, so Jaime had to leave once both of them denied anything.

 

On his way out, though, another apartment door had been opened, and leaning there against the doorway was Sandor Clegane with his arms crossed over his chest. Jaime paused at the sight of him, and while the sight of him didn’t surprise Jaime, the next words out of Clegane’s mouth did.

 

“Aren’t you going to do something about that?” Clegane asked in an irritated voice, jutting his thumb out towards the apartment that Jaime had just left. Suddenly, Jaime was struck with an idea.

 

“Did you call it in?” Jaime asked.

 

Clegane’s face drew tight for a moment. “Yeah,” he finally answered. “I can’t just beat the shit out of the guy. You’d arrest me.”

 

The shock Jaime felt briefly passed long enough for him to reply. “True,” Jaime said, “but she says everything is all right along with him, so there’s nothing I can do about it.”

 

Clegane swore under his breath at that. “Can’t you get him for some bullshit, then? Like disturbing the peace? That is what you do, isn’t it?”

 

“I’ve already warned him about the noise complaint,” Jaime told him. “If it happens again soon, then he’s been warned already and I can arrest him.” Jaime gave himself a moment to think about his next words. “If it does happen again,” he said, “just call me directly.” Jaime pulled out a card from his pocket, one he didn’t need, along with a pen and scribbled down his number on the back of it where it was blank. He handed it to Clegane. “I can arrest him for disturbing the peace, then, especially since I’ve already spoken with him.”

 

Clegane took the card. He looked down at it before raising his eyes back to Jaime. “All right,” he said.

 

Jaime nodded his head at Clegane, and without a farewell, he excused himself and headed off. On the whole walk back down to his vehicle, he couldn’t stop thinking about what had just transpired upstairs in the apartment building between him and Clegane. It was strange. Jaime never would have expected that from Clegane, not in a million years.

 

Maybe there were some surprises in the guy, after all.

 

 


	56. The Place to Rest My Head

_* * *_

 

A few days after Sansa had bought the little painted metal fish for her mother, she had also bought a grey sweater for her father to wear in the upcoming fall and winter months. The sweater had a small white wolf emblem on the right side of the chest. Her father liked wolves in the same way that her mother like fish, and Sansa had given them the gifts in hopes to show them that she was thinking about them, even if they thought she was trying to rebel against them. It wasn’t in her intentions to rebel against her parents’ wishes. Sansa just wanted to live her own life instead of the life somebody else had picked out for her. Sansa hoped her father would come to understand that in the same way that it seemed her mother understood it because she loved her parents, but she wasn’t going to do every little thing they told her to do.

 

It was quite obvious that she wasn’t going to do every little thing they told her to do because as Arya was sneaking out tonight with Gendry, Sansa asked Arya if they could give her a ride over to Sandor’s apartment. Tomorrow wasn’t a school day even though it was a week day. It was some sort of boring holiday that they cancelled school in order to celebrate, which suited Sansa just fine. She had called Sandor earlier to see if he was working today, and she found out that he was off today and tomorrow, which was perfect. Sansa also asked him if he would be home tonight, and he said he was going to meet up with some friends in the evening, but he would be home at night. She wondered what friends he was going to meet up with since Sansa didn’t really know any of Sandor’s friends, except maybe Loras and Renly, but she didn’t ask him for names. Sansa was afraid he might think she was being nosy, and he hadn’t offered to tell her their names, so she left it alone.

 

Gendry and Arya agreed to give her a ride, though, and Sansa left the house with Arya to hop into Gendry’s car. It was cold out tonight. Summer was beginning to recede into autumn, and the nights came quicker and grew colder than before. Sansa had brought a jacket with her to keep warm, and she had the sensibility to wear pants instead of a dress, skirt, or shorts tonight. Her clothing wasn’t particularly dressy, but she had taken the time to work on her hair and put on a little bit of makeup. Sansa had taken the curling iron to her hair again, so the ends were wavy and smooth, and she pinned her hair to the left of her forehead with a little crystal rhinestone bobby pin to keep it out of her face. She wore some subtle eye makeup and blush, settling for sheer chapstick on her lips as usual. When she went over to Sandor’s apartment, she tended to use her lips more often than usual and nothing above chapstick or clear lip gloss was a good idea. Sansa blushed slightly at that thought, which only served to make her cheeks look even pinker despite the darkness inside of Gendry’s car.

 

It wasn’t quite midnight yet, though it was getting close, and their parents usually went to bed at an early hour unless Sansa or Arya were out late before their curfew time of midnight. Generally, past ten or eleven, it was safe to sneak out because their parents were already in bed. It probably wasn’t the best way to inspire trust in their parents if they happened to get caught, but Sansa was going to make sure that didn’t happen to her this time. As for Arya, she had been doing this sort of thing for years, so it was doubtful she was ever going to get caught. Sansa sighed quietly as that thought passed through her head, and she glanced forward to see Gendry and Arya holding hands across the armrest between them. They were also chatting with each other, though Sansa was fairly silent in the backseat. It wasn’t because she didn’t feel sociable, but they seemed to be off in their own little world, and Sansa didn’t want to interrupt them.

 

When they reached Sandor’s apartment complex looming up against the dark night sky, Sansa leaned towards the window of her door and stared up at some of the little lights shining through a number of the windows. Despite the late hour, a lot of people appeared to be awake. Sansa turned around long enough to give Gendry a smile and thank both of them for the ride, and then she got out of the vehicle, shut the door, and walked past the main entrance as she heard Gendry’s car drive off behind her. Inside of the main lobby, everything was quiet. Sansa took the first elevator she found up to Sandor’s floor, humming a catchy tune she heard on the radio in Gendry’s car along the way. Eventually, the elevator’s door opened up, and she stepped out into the hallway beyond it.

 

Sansa walked up to Sandor’s front door and knocked lightly with her knuckles, but her ears caught the sound of something from within his apartment. Her hand froze after knocking and remained upright, her fingers still folded over against her palm, and Sansa slowly turned her head and leaned towards the door to listen more closely. There was laughing—loud, raucous laughing from more than just one person. She jumped all of a sudden, pulling away from the door, when she heard what sounded like someone banging a fist against something, and then more laughing followed the noise. Confused, Sansa raised her hand and knocked harder this time, making sure it was loud enough to be discernable over the noise inside of the apartment.

 

The laughing died down, then, and Sansa heard heavy footsteps approaching the door. She heard another jarring noise, like two solid objects colliding with each other, and it was followed by a curse. Sansa’s eyes lit up because she recognized the voice. It was Sandor’s voice cursing beyond the door, and then she heard him fumbling with the door knob. A moment later, it was open and he was staring at her, looking a little shocked to see her, but the moment was interrupted when a woman’s voice called out, “Who is it, Sandor?”

 

Immediately, Sansa bristled up. What was a woman doing in Sandor’s apartment around midnight, laughing with him and doing God only _knew_ what else? She shoved past Sandor into his apartment before he could stop her, though he didn’t really try to make a move to do so, but her feet froze not even four to five steps into his place. Sansa stared forward at the sight before her with some level of confusion, but no longer any fear or anger—because the woman wasn’t alone with Sandor. Sitting across from her on the floor around a circle of cards was Loras, one of Sandor’s friends, and surrounding them were numerous bottles of liquor and glasses of mixed drinks and shots. The woman, a small lady with curly dark hair that was cut short, held a set of cards in one of her hands and a glass in the other. She turned her head to look up at Sansa and grinned all of a sudden.

 

“Well, _hello_ ,” the woman drawled out, and Loras, who was also holding a set of cards, starting sniggering noisily as he brought his free hand up to his face to shield his mouth with it. They were all pissed out of their minds, Sansa thought with disbelief. Suddenly, she remembered Sandor, and she turned around to face him. He had already shut the apartment door, and he was leaning against it with his hands behind himself almost like a scolded child, and there was a look on his face that said he hadn’t meant for Sansa to see this.

 

“I can explain,” Sandor began, removing one of his hands from behind himself to hold it up as he spoke, but Sansa cut him off.

 

“Have you been drinking?” Sansa asked him, but Loras started laughing behind her again.

 

“We’ve _all_ been drinking,” Loras answered for him, despite the fact that the question hadn’t been meant for Loras.

 

Sansa hadn’t taken her eyes off Sandor, though. “Sandor, you’re not supposed to be drinking,” she said, her voice trembling with the effort. “You’ve been sober for almost six months now—”

 

“The best of us fall,” Loras said somberly, “from time to time . . . ”

 

However, Sansa felt an arm slink around her waist and pull at her until she was flush against another body. The alarm she felt caused her to freeze up, and when she heard the voice speaking beside her, it was the woman. “Oh, enough with all of this talking,” the lady said in a sultry voice too close to Sansa’s ear for comfort. “I want to know the name of this lovely redheaded creature beside me—”

 

Sandor crossed the distance fairly quickly because before Sansa could react any further, she felt Sandor’s larger arm wrap around her waist from the other side of her body, and he pulled her away from the lady. The sudden yanking movement sent Sansa’s hands flying upward, and she pressed them against Sandor’s chest as he pulled her flush against his body. His arm remained wrapped protectively around her waist, holding her to him. “This one’s mine,” he told the woman in a firm voice. “You go find your own damn redhead, Sarella.”

 

“Oh, you could share her for a night or two,” the woman, Sarella, suggested with a hint of amusement in her tone.

 

“She’s not available,” Sandor said curtly. Without any warning, he took Sansa by the chin to lift her head up as he looked down at her. “Are you available, Sansa?” When she couldn’t answer him and could only open her mouth to make a few incoherent sounds, Sandor took his hand away from her chin and pointed down at her. “The answer to that is ‘no,’” he informed her. “You’re not available.”

 

“Maybe she wants to be . . . ”

 

“Woman,” Sandor told Sarella, looking up at her again, “I will mark my territory right in front of you.”

 

“And _that’s_ my cue to exit,” Loras suddenly announced in a cheerful manner. Sansa turned her head to see him get up off the floor and gather up his things. “I’m not staying if we’re whipping dicks out. Renly will _kill_ me.”

 

“Oh, gross,” Sarella complained, “you just had to use that word?”

 

“What?” Loras asked, unperturbed. “Dicks?”

 

“Ugh, disgusting,” Sarella said, making a face as she shook her head.

 

“Well,” Sandor said, “at least two people in this room like them.”

 

“And two people in this room _have_ them,” Loras quipped back.

 

“And two people in this room can shut the hell up,” Sarella replied.

 

“And one person can pack her shit and go right along with Loras,” Sandor told her. “C’mon, get moving.”

 

Sarella grabbed her things as well, but when she passed by Sandor and Sansa, she leaned over and whispered loudly, “You ever get tired of this ugly old mug,” at this, Sarella tilted her head at Sandor, “you come to me, darling.”

 

“Get the fuck on,” Sandor ordered Sarella, turning his body to pull Sansa away from her. Sarella laughed at his reaction, shaking her head as well, and walked over to the front door to leave with Loras. Sansa hoped they called a cab and didn’t try to drive in their condition. They could have a wreck. Not only that, but Loras was a police officer. Surely, he wouldn’t try to drive while he was drunk. The apartment door closed behind Sarella, and Sansa looked up at Sandor to ask him if they had a safe way to get home when his lips caught hers in a sudden kiss. His hand reached up to the side of her face, holding her in place.

 

Up this close, Sansa could smell the alcohol on him. He parted his mouth against hers, his tongue licking at her lips to try and get her to part hers for him. Sansa loved kissing him, but she was afraid of getting physical with him while he was drunk. She didn’t know how many glasses he had had before she arrived here, or what he might try to do with the encouragement of alcohol in his system. Sansa then realized she had never seen him _drunk_ before, but Sandor pushed at her a little more insistently. She felt the hand he had curved around her waist slip lower and run along the dip of her back, and the sensation finally persuaded her to respond to him. Sansa parted her lips, and the first thing she tasted was the heady flavor of alcohol on his tongue. Suddenly, she thought of having a drink herself. It would help relax her.

 

Sandor walked her backwards towards his couch, but his foot hit something, and glass clinked against glass and something heavy fell over onto the floor. Sandor pulled away from her all of a sudden, looking down at the ground. “Fuck,” he swore, and Sansa looked down, too. Sandor let go of her waist and bent over to pick up the liquor bottle his foot had knocked down as well as two glasses it had hit. “Let me clean this shit up,” he told her absently without lifting his head to look at her, and Sansa watched wordlessly as Sandor carried the items into the kitchen. The glasses went into the sink after he had poured them out, and the liquor bottle went onto the counter. Sandor came back and grabbed four bottles this time. As he walked off into the kitchen again, Sansa bent to inspect one of the bottles of liquor. It was golden in color, and she twisted off the cap to smell it.

 

It didn’t smell that bad. In fact, it had an almost sweet scent to it. Sansa moved to sit down on the couch, bringing the bottle with her, as Sandor came back into the living room and grabbed the random cups strewn across the floor. He didn’t seem to notice that she had taken one of the liquor bottles, and Sansa sipped at it to try it. She could taste the bitterness of the alcohol, but there was a honeyed sweetness to it as well. Sansa shucked off her jacket, and then she drank more as Sandor finished cleaning up. The cards were already gone, so Sansa figured they must have belonged to either Loras or Sarella. Sansa heard the sudden sound of smashing glass, and it made her jump. Sandor swore aloud again, and she glanced over into the kitchen to see him shake his hands once above the sink.

 

Sandor gave up whatever he was doing after that. He dried his hands on a towel, and Sansa watched as he came back into the living room. He stared down at the floor for a moment as if looking for anything else, but everything was gone now, so he turned his attention back to her. Seeing his gaze on her, Sansa pulled her legs up onto the couch with her, the liquor bottle somewhat concealed in her lap with her hands over it. Sandor slowly sat down beside her on the couch, but his eyes were aimed downward, and Sansa felt the heat rising to her face. His hand reached out, and Sansa jolted as it grazed her lap. Sandor’s fingers closed around the liquor bottle, though, and pulled it away from her.

 

Sansa looked up, and Sandor lifted his eyes to meet her gaze. He unscrewed the square-shaped lid without breaking eye contact, and then he downed a big gulp from the bottle. Screwing the lid back on, Sandor put the bottle aside. Leaning towards her, he slipped a hand around her neck and kissed Sansa with a slow burning passion. Each move of his lips and mouth against hers was soft and smooth and unhurried, so Sansa parted her lips without needing encouragement this time. Her stomach tingled a little bit from the small amount of alcohol she had drunk just moments ago, and Sansa felt his free hand there at her stomach. His fingers curled under the hem of her shirt, and he slipped it underneath.

 

She expected it to feel cold, but Sandor’s hand was warm against her skin. It roved upwards along her side, and each nerve of Sansa’s body tingled as his fingers grazed along the edge of her bra. All the while, Sandor kissed her deeply and slowly, delving his tongue into her mouth and swirling it against her own. Sansa moaned at each sensual touch that made her shiver, and he slipped his hand around her back and unhooked her bra. It broke her from her reverie, and she pulled back from kissing him as her arms came up to shield her chest and prevent him from moving her bra. She stared at him in shock for a moment, but Sandor only looked confused as he stared back at her.

 

“What?” he asked her, his voice low, and he tried moving in to kiss her again. Sansa turned her head away, and Sandor froze halfway towards her. He pulled back, and when she dared to gaze at him, Sandor looked hurt by her actions. “What’s wrong?” he pushed further, his hand having dropped to her leg. Sansa felt it running up and down, touching her. Sandor didn’t want to stop touching her.

 

“You’re drunk,” she said like it explained everything, and Sansa reached back behind her to refasten the hook on her bra. Sandor sighed deeply at her words. He surprised her, then, letting his head fall forward onto her chest as both of his arms wrapped around her body, and he pulled her close.

 

“You’re going to hold it against me,” he said, his voice muffled against her shirt.

 

“I just don’t think it’s such a good idea,” Sansa whispered back, and she brought her arms around his neck. Her hands came up to rest against his head, touching his hair and running softly against it. She liked his touch, but she didn’t want Sandor going too far simply because he had too much to drink. He respected her boundaries when he was sober, and she was afraid he would push it drunk—like the way he had just unhooked her bra without so much as a warning or asking her if it was okay. She liked his touch when he was sober, but it felt like there was a completely different reason driving him while he was intoxicated. The thirst for physical contact or the heightened stimulation, but not his feelings for her.

 

“I can’t help it,” Sandor told her against her shirt, and she felt his teeth scrape her through her shirt as he gently bit down on her chest. “I want you so bad . . . ”

 

Sansa swallowed past a catch in her throat at hearing his words spoken like that. If she had known he would have been drinking tonight, she wouldn’t have come over to see him. It bothered her that he had been drinking because she knew he had a problem with alcohol, but Sansa doubted very much she could speak to him about it _while_ he was drunk, so she had given up after it had gotten nowhere earlier. She could talk with him about it when he was sober again. Right now, though, she had a drunk Sandor on her hands, and his hands were all over her. This wasn’t a bad thing, not exactly. She had been finding it easier as of late to let his hands roam on her, and she liked it. She liked it a lot, but she didn’t want him trying anything else just because he wasn’t in his right state of mind.

 

It struck her to use his words to her advantage. Sansa could use them to distract him with conversation. Maybe she could get him to talk instead of getting too exploratory with her. She curled her fingers against his hair, which had grown out an extra inch. Though Sansa was sure he was going to cut it soon, she liked the extra bit of length. It gave her something to run her fingers through with proper touch, and he must have liked it because he made a low noise in the back of his throat at the sensation of her hands through his hair and against his scalp. Sandor’s hands were moving up and down her sides again, slowly rubbing her body through her shirt, when she thought of what to finally say to distract him.

 

“Why don’t you tell me how badly you want me?” Sansa asked him, feeling her voice tremble just a bit at saying it out loud, but it had the desired effect. Sandor pulled away from her chest to look out at her face, though his hands were still holding her sides. They had stilled against her, and his eyes were inquisitive, dark in the low light, and maybe just a little shocked to hear such a question out of her mouth.

 

“You want me to tell you?” Sandor asked, repeating what she said as if to make sure she had actually said that.

 

“Yes,” Sansa said a little breathlessly, “tell me.” It was better than him doing it, wasn’t it? After all, it couldn’t be that bad. Sandor stared at her for a long while, and his confusion turned into something else. Without warning, he got up from the couch, and Sansa feared maybe she had said the wrong thing somehow, but Sandor only stood there for a moment. She noticed there was a nervous twitch in one of his hands, one of his fingers catching on another repeatedly, until he bent over and scooped her up into his arms. Sansa wrapped her arms around his neck to hold onto him as he carried her down the hallway to his bedroom.

 

He placed her gently on the bed, but he didn’t try to crawl on top of her. Instead, Sandor sat down on the edge of the bed beside her, and Sansa pushed herself upright into a sitting position as well. She wondered if he had carried her in here because the couch was feeling cramped to him or something like that, but Sandor didn’t say. He just stared at her for an even longer time than before, and Sansa was glad that he had slowed down, but now she was baffled by his silence. She scooted closer to him, placing her hands upon his neck, and realized she was actually curious to hear the answer to her question.

 

“Aren’t you going to tell me?” Sansa inquired, tilting her head to the side as she regarded him in the dark, and Sandor let out a breath of air she hadn’t known he was holding. He grasped the back of her neck and leaned close like he meant to kiss her, but his lips never closed upon hers. She felt his lips graze against hers, though, but by some willpower unseen he held himself back from kissing her.

 

“I want to kiss your neck,” he murmured, trailing down her chin and jaw with his breath against her skin, but despite his words, he didn’t kiss her there. “Run my hand through your hair and pull it back. Bare your throat to me. I want to bite down with my teeth. Mark you,” Sandor spoke low against her throat, and Sansa trembled harder, “to let everyone see you’re mine.” His hand had started to rub against the back of her neck. “I want to kiss you everywhere. Touch you everywhere . . . ”

 

Still, Sandor didn’t kiss her or touch her outside of his hand behind her neck. He moved his face from her throat to the side of her cheek, speaking close to her ear. His breath washed over her, sending sharp tingles of pleasure down her spine, which spread through her shoulders and back. He spoke further to her, telling her what he would do to her underneath her shirt, and Sansa felt her body responding to every word out of his lips. The intensity was hard to bear, and he saved her from no description. Next, Sandor explained in a quiet, deep voice what he would do even lower with his hands and his mouth, and Sansa felt her fingers clutch tighter in his hair. Sandor groaned deep in his throat at the tightening of her fingers and moved his head forward again to kiss her, crushing his lips against hers.

 

The air was crackling with the electricity of their bodies and hurried touch. Her words had the opposite effect on both of them, it seemed, and now they couldn’t stop touching and kissing each other. He was holding her to him, but his hands were roaming over her neck, sides, and back as well. Sansa’s hands were no stranger to his body either, and she kissed him back with equal passion as she crawled onto his lap to straddle his hips. Sansa had never considered some of the things he had mentioned to her, but now she was curious. Though she didn’t want to try them tonight, he had implanted the seeds of the ideas into her head, and they weren’t going to go away anytime soon. She would be lucky if she could stop thinking about them at all.

 

Sandor lay back against the bed, taking her with him. Sansa slid her tongue past his lips, and he groaned in response. Her fingers grazed along his neck, and her hands moved down to spread out over his chest. Sandor’s hands were still upon her waist, but they slid up her shirt just enough to let him glide his bare hands over the flesh of her lower back as they kissed passionately. Her back tingled from his touch, and she wanted to keep just doing this. This kissing with these touches and nothing more, not while he had alcohol in his system. After his one mistake from earlier, Sandor didn’t make another. She could tell he wanted her to be interested back before they took it any further, but she could also tell that it frustrated him sometimes. Sansa just hoped it never frustrated him too much, but so far, they had never had that problem, except for the one time that it happened months ago.

 

The movement of her lips slowed down against his, and she felt his hands stilling against her back. Sandor’s fingers, though, continued to curl back and forth with a light touch that slightly tickled her as well, but it felt good. Eventually, Sansa pulled back and looked down at him in the darkness of his room. His eyes appeared to gleam with the little bit of light from his window, and Sansa leaned down to kiss him on his cheek. When she looked at his face again, she noticed his eyes were closed for the quick kiss, but he reopened them and gazed back at her. Sansa almost wished desperately that he hadn’t been drunk tonight. Sandor didn’t even look drunk anymore, but she knew alcohol didn’t wear off that quickly. Maybe he was just dazed and content right now.

 

“You’re torturing me,” Sandor whispered to her, and Sansa felt the smallest of smiles curl her lips upward.

 

“I am not,” she denied softly. “Would you rather I didn’t kiss you or touch you at all?”

 

“Fuck, no,” Sandor said. “Don’t do that to me. That’s ten times crueler.”

 

Sansa felt a giggle bubble up in her throat. “I’m not being cruel,” she told him, and suddenly, she was worried about his words. It must have shown on her face because the look in Sandor’s eyes changed from lustful to concerned, and he reached up to touch the side of her face with his hand. He gently rubbed his thumb back and forth across her cheek.

 

“Fuck it, just don’t listen to me,” he said dismissively. “I just want you already. You’ve got reservations, and that’s fine. Don’t . . . just don’t . . . ” Sandor’s words were all slurring together, and Sansa wondered if it was just the alcohol or if there was sleepiness involved with it. He hadn’t been slurring his words together until now. “Just don’t look at me like that, that’s all.”

 

“Like what?” Sansa whispered back, not sure how the look on her face was being perceived by him.

 

“Like I’m gonna fucking leave you,” he said, the words slurring together again.

 

Sansa took a deep breath and sighed out what little bit of worry she might have been feeling. Her thoughts had nothing to do with him leaving her, but she could see how he would read that into her expression. Her only concern now was how she was supposed to get home tonight. Sandor couldn’t drive her home in his condition, and Sansa wasn’t so sure she’d be able to get a hold of Arya or Gendry to ask them to come back by and pick her up. She would have to set an alarm on her phone, hope it woke her up in the morning, and also hope that Sandor would be able to drive her home before her parents noticed her gone again.

 

Sansa leaned down and laid her head against his chest, snuggling against him. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I wasn’t thinking that, though.”

 

Sandor’s hand rose to her neck, his fingers grazing against her skin there. “Okay, just don’t,” he replied in a lower voice, and Sansa could have sworn he sounded like he was already halfway asleep. She lifted her head from his chest to look down at him, causing his hand to fall away from her neck. Sure enough, Sandor’s eyes were closed and his breathing was beginning to slow down into an even rhythm.

 

“Sandor,” Sansa called out in a soft voice, and Sandor slowly opened his eyes. “Maybe you should lie down properly on the bed,” she teased.

 

Sandor turned his head to the left to look at the headboard of his bed, narrowing his bleary eyes. “Oh,” was all he said. Sansa laughed somewhat at that, and then she helped him to right himself on the bed until he was lying down on it at a proper angle. Sansa noticed he was still wearing his shoes, so she helped him to get those off before kicking off her own shoes. Her jacket was still on the couch in the living room, so she didn’t have to worry about that. She grabbed her phone out of her purse and set an alarm on it for the early morning, and then she turned up the sound as loud as it would go before placing it off to the empty side of the bed.

 

Sansa pulled up the sheet to cover them both with it, though she didn’t worry about the blanket since it wasn’t cold in his room tonight, and snuggled up close against Sandor’s side in the bed. He must have been either really tired or really drunk because he was out in no time, and Sansa rested her head in the crook of his arm and shoulder as she laid her hand upon his chest. It took her longer to find sleep than him, but it wasn’t too much longer until Sansa slipped into a restful slumber beside him.

 

 


	57. Dragging That Horse Around

_* * *_

 

Massive, head-splitting agony didn’t even begin to cover the sensations Sandor felt in his brain when he woke up the next morning. A loud, jarring alarm had startled him from his sleep, and it sent sharp throbbing lances of pain through his skull with each fucking noise as it went off. Sandor tried to roll over, but his arm was caught underneath a body, which caused him to freeze. The sudden horror he felt filling his stomach nearly made him vomit right then and there. For one irreconcilable second, Sandor feared the worst—that he had gotten piss drunk and taken somebody home like he used to do, and his relationship with Sansa was going to be over because of it. He couldn’t remember anything from last night outside of the pub that he, Loras, and Sarella met up at together. Sandor fought off the urge to puke by grasping his mouth with his free hand, swallowing down the bile that threatened to come up.

 

When he got it to stay down, he slowly turned his head to look over to his right. There, lying in his bed, was no stranger, but Sansa squeezing her eyes shut before she blearily opened them again. His relief was palpable in his chest, and the constriction on his lungs went away, but it didn’t ease the pain of his hangover. Sansa, too, was waking up from the blaring alarm. She rolled over off of his arm and grasped something on the bed, sitting up as she turned off the noise. It must have been her alarm on her phone. Sansa turned her body to face him, then, and she gave him a look like she was disappointed in him. It wasn’t Sandor’s intention to get irritated with her for it, but he had a fucking hangover and he really didn’t want to deal with a bullshit lecture right about now.

 

Despite his fears only seconds ago and the fact that he should have been glad it was Sansa and not some stranger, which he was, his head still felt like it was going to burst, so he was not in the best of moods. Sandor needed to be left alone until the pain at least went away, but Sansa wasn’t aware of this. She crossed her arms over her chest as she looked down at him, her brow furrowing with the effort of her words. “Why were you drinking last night?” she asked, and Sandor heard the judgment laced in her words.

 

He couldn’t help it. He just couldn’t stop his reaction. Sandor snorted, half of it a laugh, and closed his eyes as he pinched the bridge of his nose with both sets of fingers. “It’s none of your fucking business,” he said. It wasn’t that he meant it. It wasn’t that there was anything to hide. If she was going to judge him with him in the middle of an excruciating hangover, then what she saw wasn’t going to be a pretty sight.

 

There was silence. Sandor removed his hands from his face and looked over at her. Sansa’s mouth was hanging open, her expression beyond any injury he had ever seen on her face before. Her eyes shone with hurt, her lip trembling. She looked like he might as well have slapped her given the expression on her face. The surge of guilt was instantaneous, but Sandor refused to show it. He carefully pushed himself up from the bed, grasping his forehead along the way, and sat upright as slowly as possible. He had no idea how Sansa had gotten here or what had happened last night, but she was fully clothed and so was he, so obviously nothing big. Last night was the last thing on Sandor’s mind, though. His head pounded even worse upright than lying down.

 

“I have to get home,” Sansa suddenly said, her voice tight and on edge.

 

“Then, call someone,” Sandor told her in a brusque voice, pushing himself up from the bed. Once he was standing, he made his way to the door and across the hall to the bathroom. Before he could get inside of it, he saw Sansa breeze past him, heading for the front door to his apartment. Some instinct made him look at her, and he called out, “Sansa.”

 

Thankfully, she stopped. Sansa didn’t immediately answer him, though. Sandor could see her standing there, her whole body shaking with an effort to try and be still. “What?” she asked sharply, trying to keep her voice calm.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

If his eyes didn’t deceive him, Sansa’s back showed the hitch in her breath, the possible movement of crying. Her shoulders were quivering as she tilted her head down to look at the floor. “To walk,” she said, and there was something off about her voice. “Until someone answers.”

 

The guilt came on stronger this time, and Sandor wished he had a better temperament during a hangover.

 

“Sit down,” he told her. When she remained standing without answering him, he added, “Please.”

 

Sansa’s shoulders moved up and down, but eventually, she turned away from the door and went to sit down on the couch. Once Sandor saw this, he finally went into the bathroom and shut the door behind himself. He relieved himself at the toilet, and then he took something in his cabinet for the pain. He also washed his face in freezing cold water, which in some strange way seemed to help. When Sandor walked out of the bathroom, Sansa was still sitting on the couch. He could see the back of her head from the hallway.

 

He headed into the living room and searched for his keys. As soon as Sandor managed to find them and a pair of shoes, he walked up to the front door of his apartment and opened it up before turning to look at Sansa. When she didn’t even look at him, he could feel himself getting aggravated again.

 

“Come on,” Sandor snapped, gesturing out the door. Sansa looked at him at last. Sandor raised his brow and pointed into the hallway. “You want to go home, right?” he asked, mocking her with a sardonic tone. “Or do you want to stay here all fucking day?” He was being a smartass again, and a part of him didn’t even care.

 

Sansa looked upset, but mostly, she just looked like she wanted to yell at him. Her face twisted to hold it back, though. It was good that she held it back because them yelling at each other right now wasn’t going to end well. It would not have ended well at all. Instead, Sansa somehow managed to hold her tongue. She got up from the couch to walk past him into the hallway, and Sandor closed his apartment door behind them and locked it before following her to the elevator. They rode it down to the lobby, and Sandor led the way to his car with Sansa trailing behind him. She couldn’t lead the way anymore because she didn’t know where it was parked outside.

 

The ride to Sansa’s house was in complete silence. Sandor had to use all of his attention on the road, anyway, because there was barely any left at his disposal thanks to his hangover. His head was still pounding, and Sansa wasn’t willing to talk to him. She probably had the sense to realize how bad of an idea it was with his current temperament and her anger towards him for it. Sandor could tell she was angry. He could tell she was hurt, but he was in no mood to fucking talk. They could talk about it later. She could ask him anything she wanted to ask him as long as she asked him about it later.

 

When they reached Winterfell Avenue, Sandor pulled up to the house next to hers instead of parking at the end of the street. He wasn’t going to make her walk the long distance, even if it was a risk parking close to her house. Sansa had probably snuck out again last night. If she kept this up, her parents were going to get mad at him for it and act like it was his doing, not hers. Sansa got out of his vehicle without even saying goodbye, and she didn’t kiss him like she usually did either. She was furious with him. Well, at least she had the decency not to slam the door and intensify the pain in his head like some women might have done. Sandor watched her cross the lawn until she was safely inside her house, a testament to his true feelings even if he was being an asshole right now, and then he pulled off the curb to turn around and drive back home.

 

Once he got back, Sandor slept off what he could of the rest of his hangover without setting an alarm. A few hours later, he woke up feeling twenty times better than he had in the morning. Well, twenty times better in the physical sense. Mentally, Sandor still felt like a piece of shit. He took a shower, which helped to erase any lingering traces of ache inside of his body, and then he changed his clothes into something clean and fresh. Sandor picked up his phone to dial a number in it as he stood in his bedroom. It rang a few times before someone picked up the line on the other end.

 

“Hello?” came Elder Brother’s voice through the line.

 

“Hey,” Sandor said unevenly. The guilt in his voice must have been obvious, so acutely obvious, because Elder Brother picked up on it straight away.

 

“Do you need to come over?” Elder Brother asked without needing Sandor to say anything else, and in his tone was a note of sympathy that was typical of him. Sansa hadn’t known how to respond to Sandor, but Elder Brother had always known how to respond to him.

 

“I do,” Sandor admitted, his voice trailing off, and Elder Brother told him to come on over to his house. Sandor hung up the phone call. It wasn’t long before he was parking in Elder Brother’s driveway on Quiet Isle Road, looking through his windshield at the quaint little house. Elder Brother must have heard him pull up because the door opened not even a moment later, and Elder Brother stood there to await him. As Sandor approached, the other man stepped back to let him pass into his home. The door closed somewhere behind Sandor, shutting out the light, after he had walked a few feet into Elder Brother’s house.

 

It was lit within but dim and cool, and Elder Brother led the way to his kitchen the same way as he did before. Awaiting Sandor on the dining table was a cup of hot tea, but this time is wasn’t chamomile tea. It was black breakfast tea, even though it wasn’t even breakfast time. Sandor sat down, but he didn’t grab the cup. He just sat there without saying a word. Silence filled the air. Worst of all, it filled his thoughts.

 

Elder Brother had taken a seat across from Sandor, picked up a cup he had fixed for himself, and sipped at it. He wasn’t a gentle looking man, but everything else about him was gentle. He spoke gently. He moved gently. He sipped his damn tea gently. Elder Brother was a soldier once, and he had done a lot of things he wasn’t proud of before becoming a man of faith, and because of that, Sandor could relate to him. They had a lot of things in common, and if Elder Brother could change, then Sandor could change. He was the older brother that Sandor should have had but fate had not been kind enough to give.

 

Sandor was staring at the tea cup on the table when Elder Brother’s voice broke through what few thoughts Sandor allowed himself to have.

 

“Have you been drinking?”

 

Sandor raised his eyes to Elder Brother. He was silent at first, unable to answer. Finally, though, it came out of him as he leaned forward, rubbing his neck with his hands as he pressed his elbows to his knees.

 

“Yes,” Sandor told him, his tone quiet. “I got piss drunk last night. So drunk I woke up and didn’t remember half the night. Woke up with a girl in my bed and no recollection of how she got there.”

 

Elder Brother didn’t immediately speak, but when he did, he asked, “The same girl you’ve been seeing?”

 

Sandor closed his eyes, allowing himself to sigh. There had been no point in hiding his relationship with Sansa from Elder Brother, so he had admitted to all of it along the way, even if Elder Brother didn’t approve of their relationship. Elder Brother had never outright said it that way, but he constantly told Sandor that perhaps he needed someone his own age to understand what he was going through if he expected to have a lasting relationship. Sandor had tried to explain multiple times to Elder Brother how Sansa was different, how she wasn’t like other girls her age, but Elder Brother kept up the same spiel each time they talked about her.

 

However, Sandor hadn’t wanted to mention the girl was Sansa. Sandor had gotten to a point where he was tired of explaining his relationship with her to Elder Brother, and Elder Brother probably wasn’t going to be very happy about the idea of Sandor sharing a bed with Sansa whether something happened between them or not. Sandor hadn’t shared that much information with Elder Brother regarding their relationship. He kept silence on the physical part of it.

 

“Yes,” Sandor admitted, even though he would rather have Elder Brother think it was a stranger instead of Sansa. However, Elder Brother surprised Sandor.

 

“Good,” Elder Brother said.

 

Sandor raised his head, lifting himself upright again and letting his hands fall from his neck. “Good?” he asked. “How is that good?”

 

“It shows progress,” Elder Brother said. “Look at it this way, Sandor. You were drunk, and you had your choice of women to go home with, but you chose to find the one you were in a relationship with. In the past you slept with strangers, people you didn’t know. Often when people revert back into their old habits, they pick up more than just one or two. They pick up all of them. You slipped, and you drank the alcohol, but you made some conscious choices despite that, which shows an element of change. That element of change is positive. It’s a good thing. It means you _are_ in control of yourself. It means you _can_ be in control of yourself.” Elder Brother slowly shook his head at this. “It doesn’t mean you are lost.”

 

Sandor was surprised to hear this out of Elder Brother’s mouth. It was the last thing he expected to be told by the man. “Nothing happened between us,” Sandor elaborated further.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“We didn’t have sex,” Sandor said bluntly. “I woke up fully clothed, buttoned, and zipped.”

 

“That’s even better,” Elder Brother replied with a hint of a smile on his face.

 

“Again, how is this better?”

 

Elder Brother had put down his cup of tea. He leaned forward, pressing the flats of his hands together as if in prayer, and said, “Sex was another high for you, Sandor. It was another escape. That’s all it’s ever been for you, and it’s hard to change the meaning of something once we’ve ingrained it into our souls. Have you had sex with her yet?”

 

Sandor swallowed past a lump in his throat. “No,” he answered quietly.

 

“Why do you think that is?”

 

“Because she isn’t ready,” Sandor said, annoyed with this line of questioning, and he brought his hand to the back of his neck to rub it.

 

“You’ve seduced countless women, Sandor,” Elder Brother pushed forward, unrelenting. “Women you didn’t even know. With a few of them, you almost certainly never even got their names, and you mean to tell me you can’t seduce a young woman who’s quite possibly in _love_ with you?”

 

Sandor looked at Elder Brother with a darkening expression. “I wouldn’t do that to her,” he seethed.

 

Elder Brother leaned closer, matching Sandor’s dark gaze with one of his own. “Won’t do what, Sandor?”

 

“ _Use_ her,” Sandor snapped, and Elder Brother sat back in his seat with a satisfied look on his face.

 

“Most people don’t think of sleeping with someone as using them, Sandor,” Elder Brother continued in a gentler voice this time, and the satisfied look turned into one of concern, “unless they have a predisposed negative connotation with the act. Very often, this applies to people who use sex as an outlet or as part of an addiction or to abuse survivors. It becomes hard for them to distinguish sex from exploitation. You’ve used it as a means to an end for so long that you can’t get that meaning out of your head, and you haven’t tried to pursue it because you don’t want to find another high to lose yourself in, Sandor.” Elder Brother stared across the table at Sandor with a heavy look in his eyes. “You want to heal,” he added quietly, “and this is progress.”

 

“Why did I drink, then?” Sandor brought up, throwing it back at Elder Brother. “If I want to heal so fucking badly, why did I drink?”

 

“Why did you drink?” Elder Brother asked, repeating Sandor’s own question and raising his eyebrows right along with it.

 

Sandor was seething through his own teeth. “I don’t fucking know,” he said. “I was just hanging out with some friends, and—” Sandor shook his head, not knowing what else to say.

 

“Were they drinking?”

 

“Yes,” Sandor answered.

 

“Did they ask you to drink?”

 

Sandor shook his head again, rolling his bottom lip under his teeth and biting on it. “No,” he said. “They knew I was sober.”

 

“And they never tried to ask you, not once?”

 

“Not once,” Sandor told him.

 

Elder Brother mulled this over in some silence. “Do you remember why you picked up a bottle?”

 

“No,” Sandor repeated, shaking his head slowly. “They were just drinking, enjoying themselves, and I guess I was too, but it was different.”

 

“It’s quite possible you did it just to fit in,” Elder Brother told him quietly. “You called them friends, and you never call anyone ‘friends,’ Sandor, so maybe you felt you had to join them to truly be friends with them. You got carried away and had too much because it’s hard for you to stop once you get started. It becomes a downward spiral for you, even if it starts off as something else. It’s understandable, but if you hope to get better, you cannot hang out with people who do not understand what you are going through as a recovering alcoholic and drink right in front of you. It’s not an addiction to them like it is for you. It’s one thing to run your pub, to serve customers, than it is to hang out with friends who are cracking open a bottle. You’ve got to avoid that if you hope to not make the same mistakes again.”

 

No matter what Elder Brother said, though, Sandor didn’t feel any better because of it. He understood what the man was saying, but it didn’t erase the heavy feeling anxiety in his chest or the cloud of guilt in his mind. Sandor felt as though he had betrayed something or someone with his slip up. Was it possible to betray yourself? Sandor had slip ups before, but he hadn’t gotten pissed drunk in a long fucking time, and he wasn’t proud of himself for it. He felt like shit, and it wasn’t because of a hangover. He was trying to get better, but how was he supposed to get better if he kept making the same damn mistakes over and over again?

 

They talked for a little while longer, but Sandor’s head wasn’t in it. Without ever touching the tea Elder Brother had made for him, Sandor eventually left the man’s house. As he drove down the street, he pulled out his phone and dialed a number in his contacts. The phone rang and rang and rang, and then it went to voicemail. He pulled it away, thinking it was no use. Sansa was still mad at him, he’d wager. Sandor tried her number again, though. He tried it two more times after that without success. When it became apparent that she just wasn’t going to answer her phone, Sandor almost threw it into the passenger seat to discard it, but then he remembered something very important.

 

The first rule was to not be alone. It was the reason why he could call his sponsor in the middle of the night and Elder Brother wouldn’t mind at all. Sandor wasn’t a craving another drink, but if he was left alone at his house with all of that liquor he saw sitting on the kitchen counter, he didn’t know what he might do with it. The smart thing to do would be to pour it all out, but Sandor didn’t trust himself enough to follow through with that right now. Instead, he decided to dial a completely different number in his phone. This time when it rang, it only rang a few times before someone picked up.

 

“Hello?” asked Brienne’s voice on the other end of the line. Sandor could hear the background noise of soft talking and wind whistling around her. Wherever she was, it sounded like she was outside and people were nearby.

 

“Hey,” Sandor said, and then he asked quickly, “What are you up to?”

 

“Eating,” Brienne replied cheerfully. “Over at Highgarden Café. They’ve got some really good sandwi—”

 

“Can I join you?”

 

Brienne paused for a bit. “Well, I guess so,” she said slowly. Sandor hoped that was surprise and not reluctance on her behalf. They had met up only a handful of times outside of the camp, so their friendship was tenuous at best, but Brienne didn’t drink. She was the next best candidate outside of Elder Brother or Sansa, and Sansa was either busy or didn’t want to talk to him.

 

“What road is that on?” Sandor asked, trying his best to sound casual.

 

“Rose Road,” Brienne replied, and Sandor picked up the note of worry in her tone, but Brienne didn’t say anything else aside from, “I’ll see you in a few, then.” She might have been smiling when she said that, but it was hard to tell by her voice alone. It didn’t take long for Sandor to find Rose Road, though. It was an easy place to find because it was the only road in Kingsland outside of the boulevards that utilized a high degree of trees and neatly trimmed bushes. The street lamps were old iron posts, and lined down the middle of each wide sidewalk on either side of the road were rose bushes from which the street derived its name.

 

Highgarden Café was an easy place to find because it had a huge green awning that promoted its name in life-sized letters. The building itself was made of brick from a multitude of colors, and there was a patio section outside with tables sheltered under little green umbrellas. Sandor saw Brienne sitting alone at one of the tables, and he parked his vehicle on the side of the road before getting out and making his way towards her table. He had to go in through the gate entrance that blocked the patio off from the road, so Brienne saw him before he got too close to be much of a surprise.

 

She offered a small smile as he moved to sit down, and Sandor wondered silently what the hell he was supposed to say to her. He had randomly called _her_ to ask if he could join her, so he figured he was going to have to be the one to start their conversation somehow. Sandor didn’t want to bullshit, though. He was getting a bit tired of bullshitting. He just wanted to say what was on his mind. It was going to sound weird spilling out the truth, especially to someone like Brienne, but Sandor figured Brienne could take it. She was a tough woman. Certainly, bullshitting wasn’t much her thing either.

 

“You know I have a drinking problem,” Sandor said, looking across the table at her. “That I’m a recovering alcoholic.”

 

“You’ve mentioned it before,” Brienne agreed, unaffected by his choice of topic.

 

“I had a slip up last night,” he told her, and where he expected judgment in her eyes, Brienne appeared to be concerned instead. A little light came on behind her eyes as if she finally understood why he was here, and then another look crossed her face. Sandor had come to her over other people he could have chosen, and it touched a chord with Brienne.

 

She folded her arms and leaned forward against the table. “What happened?” Brienne asked kindly, and so Sandor relayed the basic story from last night without using names. He told her about how he was just trying to bring friends back into his life again, but once they met up somewhere, the other two started drinking almost immediately. Sandor avoided it at first, choosing coke over alcohol, but at some point during the night, he must have picked up a glass. The problem was he drank so much he didn’t even remember. After that, they must have somehow bought more before they wound up at his apartment. He left out the part about Sansa in the morning, though. Sandor hadn’t told Brienne about his relationship with Sansa yet, so he didn’t want to share the events of this morning regarding her with Brienne.

 

After telling his story, he fell quiet for a minute. He was staring down at the table, and Brienne was quiet, too. Finally, he said, “I realize if I want to get better, I can’t do this. I need normal friends. Normal people. Who don’t drink.” Sandor looked up at Brienne. “I know this is really fucking weird,” he said, “but you came to mind.”

 

Brienne remained silent for some time longer. She pursed her lips, looking thoughtful, and then she extended her arm across the table with her hand laid down against the tablecloth. Sandor glanced down at it, his eyes narrowing in confusion. When he looked up at Brienne’s face again, she had raised her eyebrows at him with an amused expression on her face. “It’s called a hand,” she quipped. “You shake it.”

 

Sandor hesitated, but he reached out and clasped her hand to shake it. Brienne smiled at this, and Sandor found himself wanting to be even more honest with her.

 

“I’m seeing Sansa,” he suddenly said, and Brienne’s eyes went wide.

 

“What?” she asked, clearly not expecting that of him.

 

“Sansa,” Sandor explained to her slowly, “I’m seeing her.”

 

Brienne still looked shocked at his admission. “When did this start?”

 

Sandor just found himself shaking his head as he looked down at the tablecloth. “Months ago,” he said. When he raised his gaze back to Brienne, her look of shock had faded away. She almost looked like she expected it after the surprise was gone.

 

“Well,” she simply said, “that’s interesting.”

 

“You’re not upset?”

 

Brienne laughed softly at that. “Why would I be upset?” Brienne asked him. “She’s not _my_ daughter.” Brienne met his gaze again, though, and her expression became a little more serious. “Is that why you didn’t tell me?”

 

“I didn’t think you would like me anymore,” Sandor admitted calmly.

 

“Well, the fact that you even give a damn what people think says something,” Brienne told him in all honesty. “Frankly, it’s none of my business. It’s your life. It’s Sansa’s life. If the two of you want to see each other, more power to you. She’s old enough to make her own decisions. At least, that’s how I look at it.”

 

“Your boyfriend doesn’t look at it that way,” Sandor said.

 

Brienne snorted in a very unladylike manner. “Jaime also has an unhealthy obsession with you,” she deadpanned. “If he didn’t hate you so damn much, I would say he was gay.”

 

It was Sandor’s turn to snort, and he snorted so hard that it caused him to cough. He had to cover his mouth with his hand because the cough brought up the old feeling of bile from this morning, and Sandor definitely did not want to be sick out here in public. “Fucking hell, don’t say shit like that,” he snapped when he took his hand away from his mouth.

 

Brienne laughed at his reaction. “Loras is rubbing off on him. Quite literally,” she added. “I imagine at work they have big circle jerks when I’m not around.”

 

Sandor squeezed his eyes shut before opening them again, and then he waved his hands back and forth. “Okay, just stop.”

 

“Is all of the gay imagery unsettling you?” Brienne asked in a chipper voice. “They say that’s a symptom of repression, you know.”

 

Sandor looked across the table at her, pointing his finger at Brienne. “Watch yourself,” he warned, but Brienne just grinned further.

 

“It’s okay, you know,” she said. “If you run off with Jaime, I’ll just run off with Sansa.”

 

Somehow, her desired effect was finally reached because Sandor couldn’t hold back from laughing at that. His chest quaked with silent laughter, and he shook his head at all of the ridiculous jokes she was making. Brienne wasn’t so bad. At the end of the all, she really wasn’t that bad. Sandor had just never given her the chance before because he hadn’t trusted her, but maybe all of that could change now.

 

Maybe a lot of things could change if he just let them.

 

“You’re not so bad, Tarth,” Sandor told her, trying to sound serious. He met her gaze across the café table once more. Sandor had used her last name on purpose, and he wondered if Brienne would even pick up on it.

 

“You’re not so bad yourself, Clegane,” Brienne said, lifting her eyebrows as she grinned at him.

 

The smallest of smiles twitched at the corner of his mouth. It wasn’t a full grin, but it was something. It was a step in the right direction. It was an effort to change. It was a hope that maybe his life didn’t have to be an empty as he made it. Sandor kept his distance from people, but he had let Sansa in his life. Surely, he could let others in, too. It couldn’t be that hard. Things could change if he let them.

 

He just had to let them, and that was the hardest part.

 

 


	58. Go Ahead, Make Your Choice

_* * *_

 

When Jaime woke up in the morning, it was freezing. His initial reaction to the cold air was to bundle even further under the blankets, but the alarm wouldn’t stop going off. He squeezed his eyes against the noise of the alarm, and it took him a moment to open them. The bright red letters on his clock flashed the time at him, and Jaime resigned himself to flinging off the covers to get out of bed. He regretted his decision of no socks from last night the moment his feet touched the floor. His choice of boxers and a t-shirt hadn’t been a very smart move either. The weather had been taking a turn for autumn ever since the end of September, but now it was nearing the end of October and the air was noticeably chillier than it had been a month ago.

 

Jaime wandered to the bathroom first, and then he headed for the kitchen with a robe wrapped around his body for warmth. He wasn’t surprised to see Brienne already awake and ready for work. She was leaning against the counter in full work gear, one arm crossed over her chest and the other one holding a piece of toast. She grinned at him as he appeared around the corner, and Jaime smiled back softly, still feeling half asleep.

 

“Good morning, sunshine,” Brienne told him, and she pointed at the kitchen counter where she had set out a plate of food for him. “I made breakfast. Eggs, bacon, and toast.”

 

“Thank you, babe,” Jaime said to her, and he walked over to her first to place a kiss on her cheek before grabbing his plate and taking it to the dining table. As Jaime began to eat, Brienne walked around the kitchen to take a seat at the table with him. Her toast was gone, and she had a glass of milk in her hand.

 

“Do you want to ride to work together?” Brienne asked him, but Jaime shook his head.

 

“I’m probably going to be a while just waking up,” Jaime said, pausing with his fork of eggs halfway to his mouth. He waved his free hand dismissively at her suggestion. “You go ahead without me. I won’t be far behind.”

 

“All right,” Brienne said with a small smile on her face. She got up from her chair, walked over to him, and placed a kiss against the side of his temple. “I’ll see you in a few,” she said close to his ear, patting his shoulder, and then she headed out of the kitchen. As Jaime slowly continued to eat his eggs, he heard Brienne exit the front door of their house.

 

It wasn’t long before he was finished eating, and then he prepared for work as usual. Jaime headed out of the house when it was already sunlight outside. If the air inside of the house was cold, then the air outside of it was like stepping into a meat locker after being outside in the summer heat. As he hopped into his car to drive to the station, Jaime made sure to turn on the heater. The roads were clear this morning, and traffic wasn’t so bad. He turned on the radio to listen to some music on his way to work, patting his fingers against the steering wheel as he drove.

 

Once he arrived at the station, Jaime found a parking place and got out of his vehicle. The air inside the building was cool but tolerable, and the hallways seemed relatively empty. It struck Jaime as strange, but he kept walking until he made it to the main office area of the precinct. His first thought was to find Chief Inspector Barristan Selmy, but as he came around the corner of the hallway, Jaime stepped into an uncomfortable scene of silence amongst everyone in the room. Most people were either sitting down and or off in a corner, and Jaime had the sudden instinct to get out of the room.

 

He didn’t see Brienne anywhere, but Loras was in the office this morning. Loras had been working a few day shifts lately here or there, so Jaime wasn’t surprised to see him, but the look on Loras’s face was another story. His expression had the power to worry Jaime. The younger man approached him and leaned close to Jaime’s side. “Chief Inspector is looking for you,” Loras whispered. “He told me to bring you to him as soon as I saw you. Do you want to go in alone?”

 

“Why is everyone so quiet?” Jaime whispered back.

 

“More suits came in today,” Loras told him, sounding disturbed by the events. “They were making a big scene. Shot off at the mouth with a few sly comments about corrupt constables. Oakheart punched one of them. He’s on suspension now. Might be facing charges.”

 

Jaime swallowed past a newly building lump in his throat. “What does Chief Inspector want?”

 

“He didn’t say,” Loras admitted, glancing up at Jaime.

 

Jaime took a deep breath. Well, he could turn tail and run in the other direction, but that would just make him look guilty. It was best to walk straight into Chief Inspector Selmy’s office like nothing was wrong, and it was probably best to do it with Loras right by his side. Jaime didn’t want to make it look like Loras wasn’t following his supervisor’s orders and had warned Jaime in advance. It was one of those things that would make Chief Inspector Selmy not trust the young man, and Loras was still at the beginning of his career. One misstep on the way could ruin his entire image.

 

“You should lead me to him,” Jaime said at last. “Tensions are already high. It’s best we follow orders.”

 

Loras nodded his head at this. “All right,” he agreed.

 

Jaime followed the younger man as they weaved their way through the desks towards Chief Inspector’s office. He could feel the eyes in the room settling on the two of them, watching them pass without comment. When they made it to the office, Loras opened the door and Jaime walked through it. He noticed immediately that Chief Inspector wasn’t alone. Two other people stood in the room off to the left, both of them suits, and they turned to look at Jaime with reticent expressions on their faces as he stepped inside Chief Inspector’s office.

 

“Sergeant Lannister,” Loras announced to Chief Inspector Selmy as he stood in the doorway, “as you requested, Chief Inspector.”

 

“Come inside, Officer Loras,” Selmy ordered in a voice sterner than usual, and Jaime felt his uneasiness growing with each moment. He dared a short glance back at Loras, who also looked uneasy by this request, but he obliged all the same because it was Chief Inspector Selmy giving the order. After all, one didn’t just refuse an order from that man without consequences. “And close the door,” Selmy added with a sharpness that wasn’t there in his tone just moments ago.

 

Loras followed that request as well, and then he moved to stand beside Jaime in the room. However, Loras made an interesting effort not to stand right beside Jaime or a few inches in front of him. He stood a few inches back, which was often used as a sign of respect between different ranks of officers to acknowledge the difference in their status. It warmed Jaime’s heart despite the uncomfortable air in the room, and he turned his attention forward onto Chief Inspector Selmy standing behind his desk. The man look like he was in a quiet rage, and he was directing all of the intensity in his look onto Jaime.

 

“You’ve been a big disappointment, Lannister,” Chief Inspector Selmy informed him, and he raised his chin as he said it. “Officer Loras,” he added without breaking eye contact with Jaime, “arrest Jaime Lannister.”

 

“Sir?” Loras asked, sounding confused by the order. “I don’t understand . . . ”

 

“Arrest Jaime Lannister,” Selmy repeated himself, and he turned to look at Loras instead of Jaime. “I will not repeat myself a third time.”

 

All of the sound had gone out of Jaime’s ears, and the room itself became a blur as if Jaime was seeing it through a cloud of fog. He knew what was being said, and he could hear the following exchange, but it seemed like a dream, not reality. Any moment he would wake up, the alarm going off in his and Brienne’s bedroom, and it would be time for work. This would all just be a bad dream brought on by the presence of the suits in their precinct almost a week ago. However, somewhere in the haze of his mind, Jaime realized that Loras was reading him his rights. When Jaime looked at him, he noticed that Loras was trying to keep his voice steady as he spoke.

 

“Cuff him,” Chief Inspector Selmy ordered next.

 

“Sir,” Loras protested, turning around to face Chief Inspector Selmy, “can we not use cuffs? He’s one of us, and he’s not going to run. It would be humiliation, walking him through the station like that.”

 

Selmy seemed to be taking this into consideration. “All right,” he agreed. He looked over at the two suits in the room. “He’s yours,” Selmy told them, and they nodded their heads to lead the way out of the office. Loras escorted Jaime out without touching him, giving him more respect than he should have been giving him in accordance with the situation. It was enough to make Jaime realize that every quip and joke done in bad taste had never been done out of disrespect towards him, and he only wished he had known this sooner about Loras Tyrell. They had developed something of a friendship as of late, but it wasn’t going to last beyond this, Jaime knew.

 

Everything was a blur from the station to the backseat of the car, the following ride, and even the booking. Reality didn’t come back to Jaime until he heard the slam of the cell door behind him, jarring him back into his body. It was like his mind had been floating free from it, hanging above his head in a cloud. Jaime glanced up at the small barred window in his cell, mid-morning sunlight shining through it. He sat down on the rickety cot, and hours passed by without anything happening. Jaime could have asked for his phone call, but what would he say and who would he call? Jaime had not even fully processed the situation yet, and for once, he wanted to try to think things through before he acted.

 

Eventually, someone came to get him. Jaime was escorted out of his cell and into an interrogation room. He sat down in one of the chairs at the metal table, his eyes staring down at it, unseeing. Its surface was cold to the touch, and Jaime didn’t let his hands linger on it for too long, bringing them back to his lap instead. He had been left alone again until a different person reopened the door, and Jaime glanced up.

 

“Your lawyer is here to see you,” the young dark-haired man said, and Jaime narrowed his eyes at this news. Jaime hadn’t called a lawyer, didn’t have a lawyer, had never needed a lawyer, so what was one doing here? A sinking feeling developed in his stomach. His father had probably heard of the news by now. Certainly, he had. Of course, the moment he heard of his son in trouble he would come to the rescue with someone to get Jaime out of it. _Lannisters don’t sit in jail cells_ , Jaime heard his father’s severe voice say in his head. It was only to be expected, Jaime thought. He ought to be glad. He ought to be thrilled, but he didn’t feel anything at all.

 

The young man moved out of the way of the door to let the lawyer pass into the room. Jaime bristled up immediately. The man was dressed in a fine business suit of expensive taste but subtle appearance, carrying a briefcase in his right hand. He was on the short side with brown hair peppered with grey on the sides, and when he sat down in the chair opposite of Jaime, the door to the interrogation room was shut once more. The lawyer glanced up, a small smirk on his face. He had a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee, and his eyes were beady and small.

 

“Littlefucker,” Jaime spat, seething around the corners.

 

Petyr sighed deeply, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling in a grand gesture. When he lowered them again, he shook his head. “I really hate that nickname,” he said with an indifferent tone. “It’s so . . . ” Petyr raised one of his hands, waving it upward with an elegant movement of his wrist. “Distasteful,” he finished.

 

“What the hell are you doing here?” Jaime demanded, leaning back in his chair. “I don’t want your representation. I’d rather plead guilty than be represented by _you_.”

 

Petyr gazed quietly at Jaime for a few moments, his expression giving nothing away. “What is it about you wonderful law-abiding officials and your loathing for defense attorneys?” Petyr inquired calmly. “We are just doing our jobs, the same as you. Innocent until proven guilty, isn’t that the way of things?”

 

“Innocent my ass,” Jaime sneered. “You represent the lowest of scum—”

 

“And here I am,” Petyr said, “to represent you.”

 

Jaime felt the corner of his mouth twitch in anger, but the problem was Petyr was right. It was his job to represent criminals, and Jaime was considered by all rights a criminal now. His badge had been stripped of him, and with that, he could go ahead and deem himself fired from the force. His position, his promotion, all of it was gone. He was no longer the golden boy, and he had to answer to his crimes the same as everybody else he had put away. Petyr was right, even though the knowledge of it didn’t make Jaime feel any better.

 

“How do you expect to help me?” Jaime finally asked him, wondering what Petyr’s response would be to that.

 

At his question, Petyr smirked and tilted his chin downward. His eyes twinkled with amusement. “Do you know that popular saying? People say it all the time. ‘A Lannister always pays his debts,’” Petyr recited for him. His smirk grew with each word. “Well, a Baelish always collects.”

 

“I bet you do,” Jaime whispered.

 

Petyr’s smirk turned into a smile. “See, we already know each other so well.”

 

“Did my father send you?” Jaime inquired further.

 

“Yes,” Petyr answered, “and there’s a district attorney outside as well.” Here, Petyr folded his hands together and placed them upon the table, leaning forward as he regarded Jaime across it. “They want to make a deal. A very good deal. One I would strongly suggest you consider in spite of knowledge we both have of who sent me here to help you.”

 

“I don’t understand,” Jaime said, shaking his head. “What do you mean?”

 

“Full immunity,” Petyr replied slowly, enunciating the final word to get its meaning across. “They will grant you full immunity for everything they can get their hands on regarding your father and your uncles, Kevan and Tygett.”

 

Jaime’s initial reaction was pure disbelief at what he heard out of the other man’s mouth. They wanted him to turn over his family to save his own ass? First, he was a disgrace to the force, and now they wanted him to be a disgrace to his own family? They expected him to shit all over the only people who probably gave a damn whether he even got out of this mess? It was madness, pure fucking madness, to expect Jaime to do any such thing.

 

“Get the fuck out,” Jaime told him. “Get the fuck out right now.”

 

“Jaime, I strongly suggest—”

 

“Get the _fuck_ out,” Jaime hissed angrily, leaning forward. He raised his hand, clenching his fingers into a fist—all but one, which he pointed in a threatening manner at Petyr. “I will not repeat myself again. If you don’t get up from that fucking chair and waltz right out of here, I will climb over this table and choke your _scrawny_ little neck.”

 

Petyr was silent. He stood up from his chair, reaching down to grab his suitcase from the floor beside it, and righted himself once more to tilt his head in a bow towards Jaime. “Have it your way,” Petyr said, and then he met Jaime’s gaze to offer one of his small smirks again.

 

After that, he made his way to the door and exited the interrogation room. Jaime was left to himself again, and he wondered when the guard would come back to escort him back to his cell. Jaime brought his hands to his face, closing his eyes. He was already feeling exhausted from today’s events. Not only that, but he was hungry and they hadn’t bothered to bring him any food yet. He was going to have to complain about this mistreatment of their inmates. Jaime snorted at that thought. They wouldn’t even care what he thought. He was nobody now. There was no power or authority in his voice anymore.

 

He wondered just how his father expected to get him out of this mess.

 

Suddenly, the door opened again. Jaime looked up, expecting to see the young guard, but he saw someone completely different. Randyll Tarly strode into the room with determined steps, slapping down a folder onto the metal table before taking a seat in the chair that Petyr had just been sitting in moments ago. Randyll practically glared at Jaime from across the table, though he wasn’t glaring on purpose. Randyll’s face was just stuck in a permanent state of displeasure. For what reason, Jaime had no idea. Randyll was a high profile district attorney, though, and a very proud man. He had also served his country in the service, receiving a gnarly war wound on his side to prove it. When it came to his job as a district attorney, Randyll had a reputation for being shrewd with the law. It went well with the look on his face.

 

“What do you want?” Jaime asked him, and he couldn’t keep the bored tone out of his voice.

 

Randyll nodded his head towards the folder he had slapped down on the table when he first strode into the room. “I want you to look at those files real quick,” Randyll instructed in his usual terse voice, “and then I want you to look at me, Lannister.”

 

Aggravated but not left with much choice, Jaime sat up straighter in his chair and leaned over the table to snatch up the manila folder. He flipped it open, sighing in his boredom, but the sight of the files inside of the folder froze Jaime’s heart. It was blood work on him and his niece and nephews. Jaime remembered the day when they first thought something was wrong with Joffrey, and he and Cersei did what they could to try and find help for him. Years of therapy and counseling and nothing could fix him, and then they decided to run every test they could think of to get to the root of the problem. In the end it was Jaime’s fault as well as Cersei’s fault. Mental illness borne from a lack of genetic diversity in the boy’s blood was the culprit. As far as Jaime understood it, too many similar genes caused a mutation during Joffrey’s development process, and it left him broken. There was no fixing it.

 

They ran tests on Myrcella and Tommen to make sure the other kids were safe. There were no similar mutations with the two youngest, and Jaime had thought at the time that two out of three wasn’t so bad. They had two perfectly healthy kids out of three children. Even if one of them was a psychotic little monster, at least it was only one of them and not all of them. Jaime had tried to talk Cersei into enrolling Joffrey into a mental ward to get him professional help twenty-four seven, but Cersei had refused the suggestion. She had told Jaime she would never do that to one of her babies, but Jaime knew one day Joffrey wasn’t going to be a little baby anymore. One day he was going to be a full-grown man, and there would be full-grown consequences to come of his behavior.

 

Cersei had never listened to him, though, and it had begun the slow breakdown of their relationship together. Eventually, he and Cersei had drifted apart beyond any repair when Jaime turned his own life around two years ago. Jaime had become a different person, and Cersei had remained the same. If anything, Jaime sometimes thought that Cersei had become worse. She wasn’t the person she used to be all those years ago. Cersei was once carefree and daring at heart, just like Jaime, but then time had changed her. Maybe it was Joffrey’s fault. Maybe it was her marriage to Robert Baratheon. Jaime had never truly figured it out. While he still loved Cersei like a sister, he wasn’t in love with her anymore. She was his twin, and she would always mean something to Jaime, but she had betrayed his trust and his love and his loyalties to her, and things would never be the same between them ever again.

 

Staring down at those files, everything had come flooding back to him. Jaime tried to control the onset of emotions it brought upon him to see all of this in the possession of someone else’s hands other than his sister’s or his own. Even seeing it in the hands of a doctor or his father wouldn’t have bothered him, but this was Randyll Tarly. Randyll was a district attorney known for his strict solidity with the law and his firm backbone, and here he was, holding blackmail files on Jaime to get what he wanted without much of a fuss.

 

“Where did you get these?” Jaime asked in a low tremulous voice, glancing up at Randyll over the manila file folder.

 

Randyll didn’t smile or smirk like Petyr. It wasn’t in the man to pretend at niceties. He was firm and to the point. “Where I got them is not the important part,” Randyll said. “The important part is what am I going to do with the information that has been given to me, and that, Lannister, is entirely in your hands. Just like that folder is right now.”

 

Jaime glanced down at the files again. His hands were shaking as they held the folder. He knew what was being threatened—his reputation, Cersei’s reputation, the welfare of Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen. All of this would be made public knowledge just to spite him. They would have Jaime behind bars already if he refused the deal, but these files weren’t about Jaime. They were about the people that mattered to him outside of these walls. Jaime could handle the slander on his name. He might even be able to handle it against his sister, but the children were the innocent ones in this. They didn’t deserve to have their lives ruined because of their parents’ mistakes.

 

With trembling fingers, Jaime gently closed the folder and placed it back upon the table. He drew in a deep breath of air into his lungs, and then he lifted his eyes to look up at Randyll as he exhaled it as calmly as possible. There was no expression on the other man’s face except for his usual appearance of constant displeasure, and Jaime knew without having to ask any further questions what he needed to do. He raised his chin with pride in the motion, still a lion despite his lack of claws.

 

“I want to speak to my lawyer,” Jaime said evenly.

 

 


	59. No Damsel in Distress

_* * *_

 

Sansa tugged fretfully at the jagged hem of her bright green dress, trying to make it go a little bit lower. While it wasn’t a revealing piece, it was apparently too short to go any lower than where it already reached on her thighs. She gave up on the dress, glancing up at her reflection in the mirror again, and frowned as she reached up to adjust the large yellow flower clip in her hair. It wasn’t a true part of the costume, but an addition she added herself. Once Sansa finished rearranging the flower clip, she tugged at the thin straps laid across her shoulders that held a set of iridescent blue fairy wings upon her back. Sansa felt a little foolish dressing up for Halloween, but if Jeyne and Margaery were dressing up as well, then it couldn’t be so bad. When Sansa thought about it, though, her own choice of costume had been a horrible choice given how the weather had been getting colder as of late, but it was too late to find a new costume now. Her fingers tugged once more on the fringe of her green dress, and Sansa wished she and Arya had picked out a different duo to dress up as for Halloween this year.

 

Arya, of course, had decided to dress up like a guy. They had wanted to pick out a costume set that matched, and the two of them had settled upon Peter Pan this year, which meant Arya was going as Peter Pan and Sansa was going as Tinkerbell. Sansa’s hair wasn’t blonde, and she refused to wear a wig, so she was just going to have to be a redheaded Tinkerbell. Instead of pinning it up in a bun like Tinkerbell, Sansa just let her hair fall loose and put some curls in it. She was breaking all of the Tinkerbell costume rules to the point that she just looked like a random green fairy, but it would be all right. Arya didn’t seem to mind much, and besides, they weren’t going to stay out all night in their costumes. They were going to walk with Bran and Rickon, and then they were going to head back home to drop them off. After that, they had all planned to go somewhere else for a little while. Maybe a costume party. They hadn’t decided yet, so they would have to wait and see.

 

Sansa hurried downstairs when she was ready. Arya was dressed up in brown trousers, a green poet shirt with jagged sleeves that she had cut into herself, and a green cap with a pointy red feather sticking out of it. Bran was dressed up a like a pirate, and though he didn’t really want to go trick-or-treating because he claimed he was too old for it, he decided he would tag along simply to get free candy. Rickon was beaming with excitement, bouncing up and down in place, and dressed up as a Viking with a bunch of furs wrapped around him as part of his costume and horned helmet on top of his head. He even had a large foam axe in one hand. Ned and Cat were trying to get them all together for a picture as Sansa was coming down the staircase, and Cat looked up and spotted her with a grin on her face. She lifted her hand and gestured at Sansa to join them.

 

“Come on, Sansa,” Catelyn called out, smiling at her. Ned was fumbling with the camera as Catelyn tried to line up Rickon, Bran, and Arya all together in a neat row. “Let’s get a picture of all of you together in your costumes . . . ”

 

“It better not go up on the wall,” Bran said, sounding disdainful of the idea.

 

“It’s going to go up on the wall,” Arya said matter-of-factly, “just because you said that.”

 

“I’ll play target practice with your face on it,” Bran responded idly.

 

“Sansa,” Arya called out, looking over her shoulder, “do you have a bag of glittery fairy dust on you? Throw it in Bran’s face.”

 

“Arya,” Cat warned, and then she looked at Bran next. “Bran,” Cat warned him as well. “You two play nice now.”

 

“Sorry,” Sansa said quickly as she joined Arya by her side in the line up, “I don’t have any fairy dust on me.”

 

Arya turned her head, gaping at her. “How are you going as a fairy and you don’t have any fairy dust on you?”

 

Sansa shrugged her shoulders. “I didn’t think about it,” she said simply.

 

Arya sighed. “You are a _horrible_ fairy.”

 

“Yeah, nice going, Tinkerbell,” Bran added sarcastically.

 

“You shut up,” Sansa shot back at her brother.

 

“When are we going?” Rickon whined, jumping up and down in place. “I want _candy_.”

 

“You’ll be going as soon as everyone lines up nice and neatly so I can take a picture,” Ned told him, giving everyone a look, and then he moved his hand in a back and forth motion to indicate that they all scoot over to the right. Rickon scooted over, followed by Bran, followed by Arya, who was then followed by Sansa. Once they were all nice and neat in a row and within camera shot, Ned told them all to smile and he clicked away with the camera, taking a few pictures. Arya stuck up her hand and gave Bran bunny ears in one of them, which was unbeknownst to her younger brother.

 

They all piled out of the door after that, all of them except for Ned and Cat. Their parents were staying home to have some alone time while Sansa and Arya took their little brothers out for trick-or-treating this evening. It wasn’t dark yet, though the sun was setting on the horizon beyond street. As they walked down the sidewalk, Sansa saw her friends, Jeyne Poole and Margaery Tyrell, at the end of it. Jeyne was dressed up in a traditional blue Cinderella outfit with her hair pulled up atop her head and a black choker around her neck, and Margaery had a long red cloak with its hood thrown over her head because she was dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. When Margaery turned around, she was even holding a basket in her hands. She wore a white dress under the long red cloak, which was tied at the throat, and the chest was designed in the peasant top fashion. Margaery’s brown curls spilled out from underneath her cloak’s hood, and she smiled in that crooked way of hers when she saw Sansa, Arya, Bran, and Rickon approaching them.

 

“Aren’t we a sight?” Margaery asked, glancing between Sansa and Jeyne with a gleam of amusement in her eyes.

 

“If someone carries the three of you off, I’m just going to let them do it,” Arya quipped at them.

 

“Why would someone try to carry them off?” Bran asked his sister, sounding befuddled by her suggestion.

 

Arya sighed as she rolled her eyes. “I swear you’re gay,” she said, and Bran punched her in the shoulder.

 

“Shut up, ugly!” he exclaimed. “I am not!”

 

“You were checking out Sansa’s boyfriend,” Arya shot back. “Don’t even try to deny it.”

 

Bran’s face turned an interesting shade of red. “I was not! Quit lying!”

 

“I’ve got the perfect boy for you to meet—”

 

At this suggestion out of Arya’s lips, Bran punched her in the shoulder again, which made Arya turn around and start chasing him down the street as he ran away from her. Sansa, Jeyne, Margaery, and Rickon all watched as Arya and Bran hurried away from them, yelling obscenities back and forth at each other, and Sansa sighed at their behavior. She placed a hand on Rickon’s shoulders. “It looks like it’s you, me, Margaery, and Jeyne,” Sansa said to Rickon, and he shrugged indifferently to the news.

 

“Okay,” Rickon said, and he followed Sansa as she led the way down the street. They visited various houses to collect candy for Rickon, and Sansa entertained herself by talking with Margaery and Jeyne. Before long, they arrived at Steel Street, and Bran and Arya somehow found their way back to the group completely out of breath. Gendry’s house was one of the first houses on the road, and Sansa wondered if he was participating in Halloween this year.

 

As they went up Gendry’s driveway to knock on his door, a figure suddenly jumped out of nowhere and hollered out, “ _Arrrgh!_ ” It scared the living daylights out of Sansa, Jeyne, Margaery, and even Rickon. All four of them screamed in unison, and it turned out it was just Gendry. He burst out laughing at their reaction. Gendry was wearing a fake hook on one of his hands, and he was dressed up like Captain Hook from Peter Pan without the wig for the long hair.

 

“Oh my god, Gendry!” Sansa cried out at him. “Was that really necessary?”

 

“Yes,” Gendry said with a serious tone to his voice, and he nodded his head sagely, “it was entirely necessary. After all, it is Halloween.”

 

“I thought it was good,” Arya said, grinning like a fool.

 

“Ah!” Gendry exclaimed. “Peter Pan!”

 

“Captain Hook!” Arya exclaimed right back.

 

“I want candy!” Rickon hollered out, holding up his bag and shaking it. “Please!”

 

“Oh, all right,” Gendry said, and he walked up to his front door to pick up a big bucket of candy he had hidden from sight with his fake hook. He scooped up a few pieces with his whole hand and dropped them into Rickon’s bag.

 

“Thank you!” Rickon said happily, looking down into his bag by nearly sticking his whole head into it.

 

“You’re welcome,” Gendry told him with a smile. He looked up at Arya. “Hey, Arya, you should help me scare some more little kids.”

 

Arya grinned once more. “Sure thing,” she said, and she walked up to his side.

 

“Oh, are you ditching us now?” Margaery teased Arya.

 

“Yes,” Arya told her. “I’m jumping ship. You guys go on without me!”

 

Sansa left Gendry’s house with Rickon and Bran in tow and Jeyne and Margaery by her side, and they visited a few more streets before Sansa steered them back in the direction of home. The sun had long since set by now, and Sansa dropped both of the boys off with their parents, and then she told them that her, Jeyne, and Margaery were going to cruise around the city for a while. The three of them left Sansa’s house again and ambled down the sidewalk to Margaery’s parked car over by Jeyne’s house. As they got into Margaery’s car, Sansa wondered where they were going to go next. She sat down in the front passenger seat across from Margaery, buckling herself up, and glanced back at Jeyne. Jeyne had been quiet most of the evening, which was usually typical of her as of late, but Sansa wanted to try and get her in on some conversation.

 

“Are you still seeing that boy from third block, Jeyne?” Sansa asked, turning around in her seat to get a better look at her friend in the backseat. “I haven’t heard you talk about him in a while.”

 

Jeyne widened her eyes, quickly shaking her head. “Oh, no,” she said, “I’m not seeing him anymore.”

 

Margaery grinned wickedly from the driver seat without looking back. “She’s still got a thing for your brother, Sansa.”

 

“I do not!” Jeyne denied.

 

“You do, too,” Margaery said, still grinning. “She’s practically in love with Theon—”

 

“I am not!”

 

“Margaery, don’t pick on her,” Sansa said, trying to give Jeyne some space. Jeyne had the biggest crush on Theon for the longest time, but Theon never showed any interest in Jeyne mostly because of her age. Theon was almost twenty-two now, and Jeyne was the same age as Sansa, so Theon never looked at Jeyne as a potential girlfriend. Sansa thought it was for the best because Theon didn’t know how to keep his pants zipped shut, and he would have only ended up breaking Jeyne’s heart in the long run, anyway.

 

“What about your boy toy, Sansa,” Margaery shot back with a smirk on her face. “Are you still seeing him? You haven’t talked about him lately.”

 

It had only been a few days since Sansa hadn’t talked about him, but Margaery picked up on these sorts of things pretty quickly. Ever since Sansa had woken up that morning and Sandor spoke to her the way he did after drinking the night before, she hadn’t wanted to be around him. Sansa had wanted to yell at him that morning. She had wanted to give him a piece of her mind, but she bit back the words and swallowed them down. Sansa knew had she said something that Sandor only would have said something even ruder than before, and Sansa had been afraid of what he might say to her. She had been afraid of what he might say because if he pushed it too far she might have left him over it, and she didn’t want to leave him, so Sansa had bit her tongue and held back the words that threatened to spill out of her mouth. It had taken all of her willpower to do it, too. Every last ounce of it.

 

“I guess so,” Sansa said quietly, answering Margaery’s question. “We had a fight, and I just haven’t spoken to him since then.”

 

“Has he tried to call you?” Margaery asked.

 

“Two or three times, but not much,” Sansa admitted. “I think he realizes he hurt me, so he hasn’t tried to call me nonstop like he didn’t do anything wrong.”

 

Margaery snorted at that. “Men,” she said scornfully. “What is it with them and ringing your phone off the hook when they act like assholes and can’t admit it?”

 

“So they can chew you out and act like it’s your fault,” Jeyne answered from the backseat.

 

“Amen to that,” Margaery agreed, and Sansa thought this was true, too. Joffrey had done it to her on multiple occasions when they were together. “Hey,” Margaery said all of a sudden, “is he working tonight?”

 

Sansa felt nervous butterflies flutter around in her stomach at this question. “Yes, I think so,” she told Margaery. “Why?”

 

“Well, Jeyne hasn’t met him before,” Margaery suggested. “Why don’t we stop by so Jeyne can meet him, and then you two can go have a talk in person and make up already?”

 

“Oh, I want to meet him,” Jeyne piped up from the backseat.

 

Sansa wasn’t so sure about this idea, and she glanced down at her costume as the number one reason why. It seemed a little strange to her to stop by Sandor’s place of work while in a Halloween costume to talk seriously with him, but she also doubted that she would be able to talk Margaery out of this idea. Once an idea was implanted in Margaery’s head, it became almost impossible to talk her out of it. Margaery had already turned the car around, too, and she was driving in the direction of Clegane’s Keep. Sansa knew the way there by heart, and she recognized every street that led to it.

 

Sansa allowed herself a deep sigh. There was no getting out of it now, so she sat back and waited for the ride to lead them to the parking lot Clegane’s Keep, and the three of them carefully exited the vehicle in their dresses. The parking lot was packed with cars, and the inside of the pub looked like it was overflowed with patrons. Margaery led the way to the front entrance with her red cloak floating behind her in the breeze that picked it up. It was freezing outside, and Sansa’s legs were covered in goose bumps. It made her wish she had a cloak like Margaery’s with her to keep her warm, but once they stepped inside, a gust of warm air encircled her and chased away those thoughts. Margaery pulled back her hood and glanced around the pub like she was looking for something or someone, and she spotted him behind the counter, turned back to smirk at Sansa, and led the way over to the bar.

 

Looking up at the bar, Sansa saw him as well. Sandor was talking with two of the patrons, a short man with dwarfism and a lovely blonde woman wearing a silver dress. Margaery strode straight up to the bar, sat down beside the short man, and ordered a drink from Sandor. Sandor seemed to recognize her somewhat, and he glanced up to see Sansa and Jeyne not too far behind Margaery. He froze for a moment, staring at Sansa, before he turned his attention back to Margaery and nodded his head at her, asking her for identification. Margaery provided it just as Sansa and Jeyne walked up to sit down to the left of Margaery, and Sandor moved off to prepare whatever she had ordered from him. Sansa sat in a stool beside Margaery, and Jeyne sat down beside Sansa.

 

“Was that him?” Jeyne asked quietly, leaning close to Sansa. Sansa felt a small flush of heat creep up onto her cheeks, though she didn’t know why, and she nodded her head.

 

“Yes,” she whispered back, “that’s him.”

 

“He’s kind of cute, I guess,” Jeyne said, though she sounded unsure of it. “His face looks funny, though.”

 

“Don’t be rude, Jeyne,” Margaery told her, speaking in her normal voice instead of whispering like the two of them. “People can’t help things like that.”

 

“Sorry,” Jeyne said abashedly, though Sansa didn’t really pay much attention to it. She was nervous again, the butterflies fluttering around in her stomach once more, because Sandor had come back with Margaery’s drink. As he slid the drink towards Margaery on the countertop, Sandor glanced over at Sansa again, but Margaery brought his attention back to her.

 

“Thank you,” Margaery said, leaning forward onto the countertop, “for bringing me just what I wanted.” Sansa heard what sounded like a note of sultriness to her friend’s voice. As Margaery had leaned forward, she pressed her chest right onto the countertop, too, and Sansa saw Sandor’s eyes flit down momentarily before shooting up again. He nodded his head at Margaery.

 

“You’re welcome,” Sandor told her curtly, and he glanced over at Sansa again until another patron called for his attention across the bar. Excusing himself from their presence, Sandor left them to tend on the person at the other end of the bar.

 

“You’ve got a looker, Sansa,” Margaery said, sitting upright again as she grabbed her glass and lifted it to her lips for a sip.

 

“Well, you were wiping down his counter with your chest,” Sansa deadpanned to her friend, giving Margaery a look from the side. “What did you expect?” she added, though Sansa wasn’t jealous or upset that Sandor had looked down at Margaery’s cleavage for all of two seconds. If Margaery was going to squish them all over the place, then men were going to look at them, even Sandor.

 

“He looks old,” Jeyne said all of a sudden.

 

“I don’t think she likes him,” Margaery told Sansa, turning to give her a grin.

 

Sansa sighed deeply. Her friends were going to drive her insane tonight. All of a sudden, she decided she would rather be at home than here in Sandor’s pub. He was in the middle of work, anyway, and it wasn’t like he had time to talk, so Sansa slid off the stool.

 

“Where are you going?” Margaery asked her.

 

“I’m going to be waiting outside in the car,” Sansa said, “for whenever the two of you are ready to go.” She began walking in the direction of the pub’s entrance. Sansa could talk to Sandor at a much better time than this later on, so she really didn’t want to stay here, bored, watching him flit around between patrons. Sansa barely made it to the door when a hand reached out to touch her forearm with its fingers without grabbing her, and she stopped to turn her head and see who it was that touched her arm.

 

Sandor stood there, staring at her. His hand was still on her arm for a moment longer than it needed to be, and he slowly let it drop back to his side. “Hey,” he said in a low voice. “Sorry about that. In the middle of work,” Sandor added, and he tilted his head over his shoulder to indicate the huge crowd inside of the pub. Sansa understood without him having to say it, though, but she wondered if he realized that.

 

“I know,” she said softly, nodding her head at his explanation.

 

“You got a moment to talk?” Sandor asked her, and Sansa figured there was probably no avoiding it now that she was here. Steffon, Allard, and Asha were all working tonight with Sandor, so it wasn’t like he was hurting for help on the floor. If he had time to take a break, then Sansa didn’t have much of a choice but to agree. After all, coming here and then refusing to talk to him would have been a really unkind thing to do, and it wasn’t like Sansa to be that way. If she was going to avoid him, then she was going to do it properly and not show up at his place of work just to ignore him when she saw him there.

 

Sansa nodded her head again. “Okay,” she agreed, and Sansa thought he would lead her outside, but Sandor made a motion with his head for her to follow him before he turned around and headed for the door to the stockroom at the corner of the bar. Sansa followed him, glancing back at her friends who were still sitting down at the bar. Jeyne gave her a curious look, but Margaery smirked at Sansa and gave her a thumbs up sign with a wink.

 

After Sansa had walked past the door into the stockroom, Sandor closed the door behind her. She turned around to face him, suddenly feeling foolish in her green Tinkerbell dress and fairy wings. Sandor was dressed in regular clothes tonight, even though half of the patrons in his pub were dressed up for Halloween. He stared at her for a moment, and then he moved to sit down on the edge of what looked like a hall table set against the wall. It was strewn with some random objects, but the end he sat on was empty.

 

“I’ve really been wanting to talk to you, Sansa,” Sandor told her, and despite the fact that they were alone, his voice was quiet.

 

Sansa found herself looking down at the floor as she shuffled one of her feet across it. “I know,” she said softly, unable to meet his gaze. She hadn’t wanted to talk to him. After the way he had spoken to her and treated her that morning, Sansa had wanted nothing more than some time away from him. Sandor had spoken to her like she was nothing to him, and that had been the thing that had hurt Sansa the most. Even if he had been in pain or experiencing a hangover from drinking too much the night before, it was no excuse for his behavior towards her. All he had to do was tell her he was hurting, not now, and Sansa would have understood and left it alone until he was ready to talk to her about it. Instead, Sandor had snapped at her, swore at her, basically treated her like she meant nothing to him. That was how it felt to Sansa, even if it wasn’t the truth. It was how he made her feel, not his intentions, that left the lasting impact upon her.

 

If he wanted their relationship to work, then he couldn’t talk to her like that. Of course, Sandor was allowed to get mad. He could yell if he was angry. Everyone yelled from time to time, and nobody could say they had never felt upset or irritated in their entire life. Those things were understandable to Sansa, and she didn’t expect him to be a robot with only positive feelings and emotions, but to completely belittle her was another matter altogether. It wasn’t something that Sansa was going to let Sandor do to her, not after so long of having dealt with it from Joffrey and learning to be stronger afterwards. She had grown so much since her relationship with Joffrey had ended, and Sansa wasn’t going to give that up for Sandor. Regardless of her feelings for him, she wasn’t going to give that up. Sansa realized she deserved better than to be treated in that manner by someone, and she simply wasn’t going to allow it to happen to her again.

 

“I’m sorry,” Sandor finally said after a long stretch of silence between them. “For how I acted that morning, I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t erase it. I know that.” Sandor was quiet for a moment before he spoke again. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I had a massive hangover. It doesn’t excuse it, but I hadn’t had one in a long time. I didn’t deal with it well.”

 

“All you had to do was tell me that,” Sansa said to him, looking across the short distance at Sandor. Sandor glanced up from his lap to meet her eyes, and she saw the pain in them, but she didn’t feel sorry for him. She had hurt her, so he deserved to feel a little pain himself.

 

“I realize that now,” Sandor told her without breaking eye contact.

 

Sansa raised her chin, crossing her arms over her chest. “Did you think I would act like a child?” she asked him, finding it easy to be bold.

 

Sandor looked down at this, and Sansa watched as he took a deep shaky breath. He brought both of his hands to his face, holding them to a point over his mouth before letting them fall back to his lap. “Sansa,” he said, raising his eyes back to her face, “I have never been in a relationship before. This is new to me. I don’t always know how to act. Or what to do. Or what to say. I’m going to fuck up. I’m going to fuck up a lot. But I’m going to learn, too, if you’ll let me.”

 

He was pleading with her in the most subtle way possible, Sansa realized. She had thought he had been in relationships before and that it had just been a long time since his last one, but Sandor was saying the opposite of that and this was news to her. “Am I,” Sansa began uncertainly, wondering if she should even ask what was on her mind, but the question was already on the tip of her tongue. She might as well say it. “Am I your first girlfriend?” Sansa asked.

 

Sandor was quiet, staring at her. “Yes,” he finally said.

 

Sansa wondered if her shock was plain on her face. She closed her mouth when she realized it was open, and tried to think of what to say next. She swallowed past a catch in her throat, tightening her arms across her chest. “I don’t like the way you act when you drink,” she told him.

 

At this, Sandor took another deep breath. He looked up at the ceiling briefly, trying to find the words to answer her. “Sansa,” he said, “I told you before we got into a relationship that I had problems. I told you that I was a recovering alcoholic. I told you that I was a fucked up person, still trying to figure out right from wrong. All of that was true. I’m learning. I’m trying. It’s not easy, but I didn’t lie to you. I never tried to hide that from you.” Sandor twisted his fingers together on one hand before balling it together in a tight fist. “I’m not going to be an easy person to be in a relationship with. I told you no horses . . . no sunsets.” His voice cracked on the last word, and Sandor brought his hand up to his face to rub his fingers over his lips and chin.

 

Suddenly, Sansa wanted to go to him. She could have fought off the urge, but she still had feelings for him and she didn’t want to make him feel alone. She cared about Sandor, and that hadn’t changed. He hadn’t done anything so drastically to make that change, and so she slowly crossed the distance between them and placed her fingers upon his legs. She was looking down at his lap when she spoke instead of looking at him, the tips of her fingers tapping down with a light motion upon his legs. “I recall a sunset or two,” Sansa said softly, and when she raised her eyes to his, Sandor was staring at her with a furrow brow, biting back on his lower lip as if trying to stop it from trembling and betraying him.

 

He reached out to slide his hand behind her neck and pull her towards him, gently capturing her lips in a kiss. Sansa returned the careful motion of his lips upon hers, enjoying the feel of him. It had only been a few days, but she had missed his lips, his hands, and his presence around her. Sansa felt his hand slide further into her hair, pressing her closer to him as he parted his lips against her mouth, and Sansa answered him by opening hers as well. Sandor deepened the kiss, his tongue sliding into her mouth, and Sansa moaned softly as she moved further between his legs to get closer to him.

 

Just then, the door to the stockroom opened up, and Sansa pulled back from Sandor’s lips out of shock. She quickly glanced over at the door. Sandor didn’t remove his hand from the back of her neck, though. He, too, looked over to see who had interrupted them.

 

Asha stood there in the doorway, her eyes wide and her expression looking quite shocked at the sight before her. She jutted her thumb over her shoulder as if to indicate something that she didn’t share with them out loud before she pointed at them with her index finger. It took her a moment before she finally spoke.

 

“Clearly, I’m interrupting something,” Asha said all of a sudden, and she turned around and left the stockroom, closing the door behind herself.

 

Sansa looked back at Sandor, breathing lightly through her parted lips. “Maybe we should go back out there,” she suggested in a quiet voice, and Sandor turned back to her, his eyes falling to her lips. He brought his hand from around her neck to her chin, catching her bottom lip with his thumb.

 

“Not just yet,” Sandor murmured back, and he captured her lips with his once more.

 

 


	60. She Don’t Want the World

_* * *_

 

When Sansa pulled away from him at last, Sandor felt her breath against his lips. He was sure it must have been a sight for Asha to see them kissing with Sansa dressed up like a fairy in a green tube dress with wings on her back, but that was what Asha got for not knocking. Sandor was still sitting down on the edge of the table with Sansa standing between his legs, and he let his hands fall down her sides before he pulled her closer by the waist. Sansa was wearing her hair down tonight the way he liked it, and Sandor liked it that way because he could run his fingers through it. He loved touching her hair, and any opportunity she gave him to do it was a blessing in disguise. There was something about Sansa’s hair that Sandor found immensely attractive, whether it was the feel of it, the length of it, the color, the scent, or all of those things.

 

His hand reached up to slide over Sansa’s shoulder, pushing away the cascade of auburn hair from her bare skin. Sandor dipped his head to press his lips against her shoulder, and he could feel the ripple that passed through her at his touch. Sansa tilted her head back, letting out a soft sigh. He flattened his other hand against her back, and a brief flash of images passed through his head of peeling that dress off of her and taking her against the table, fairy wings and all, and Sandor closed his eyes against the onset of images. His fingers curled together against her back, making a fist. He wanted Sansa more than anything in the world, but he wasn’t going to have her until she gave herself to him. Sandor wasn’t about to take anything that wasn’t given, and as hard as the wait of it was, it made it all the more desirable through each passing moment.

 

“I should really go back out there to Margaery and Jeyne . . . ” Sansa suggested quietly, but she arched her back under the touch of his hand despite her words that said she should do otherwise. Sandor had uncurled his fingers from making a fist, sliding his hand in a circle around her back, and she was responding to it. These little nuances gave away her desire, even though she constantly restrained herself around him. Sandor sought nothing more than to find the crack in Sansa’s armor to allow him to get underneath it, but there was no time to explore the little nooks and clefts of her body back here in the stockroom at his workplace. She was right, and she ought to have been getting back to her friends.

 

“I don’t like your friend, Margaery,” Sandor said close to her ear, grazing his fingers along her neck to brush more hair out of his way. Sansa shivered at the light touch of his fingers against her neck and the close proximity of his voice. Margaery, if Sandor remembered correctly, was the one who ran her big mouth in the beginning and nearly cost him Sansa’s presence in his life. Those were things Sansa ought to have heard from Sandor’s lips, not her friend’s big mouth, but it was too late to change that now. Besides, things had worked themselves out in the end. He still had Sansa. She was right here, right now, in his arms.

 

“You were looking at her boobs,” Sansa replied in a low voice, but Sandor could tell she wasn’t angry with him. More or less, she was just pointing out facts.

 

“Well, when you stick them in people’s faces, the eyes see,” he told her slowly, and Sandor lowered his mouth onto her shoulder again before bringing his face around to the bare skin of her upper chest. Nuzzling her there, he wrapped both arms around her middle and held fast onto her. “But I’d rather look at yours,” Sandor murmured against the dip of her cleavage, and Sansa let out a shaky breath above him as she wrapped her arms around his head and ran her fingers through his hair. Sandor kissed the top of her breast when a fist started banging against the door, startling Sansa in his grasp.

 

“Hey, lovebirds, we need vodka!” Allard shouted through the door, and Sandor dropped his face against Sansa’s chest in full, sighing against her. “Zip up your pants and pull down your dresses! We’re coming in!”

 

Given the warning, Sansa tried to pull away from Sandor, but he wouldn’t let her. Sandor tightened his arms around Sansa to hold her closer, so when the door opened up and Allard came into the stockroom, he got an eyeful of Sandor with his face buried against the chest of a young redheaded fairy. The next words out of Allard’s mouth were, “ _Damn_. I’m jealous of you, Sandor.”

 

“Oh, yeah?” Sandor asked him, finally lifting his head from Sansa’s chest. “What for?”

 

Allard sighed deeply and said with a measure of longing, “I want a fairy.”

 

Sandor let go of Sansa, and she moved out from between his legs as he made a motion to stand up again. “Well, go catch one,” Sandor shot back, gesturing out of the stockroom door to the pub beyond it. “There’s twenty of them floating around out there.”

 

“No, there’s only four,” Allard corrected him, “and two of them came here with boyfriends.”

 

“Like that’s stopped you before.”

 

“I’d rather not get decked tonight by some drunk lug,” Allard replied. “Besides, your fairy is the prettiest.”

 

“Touch her,” Sandor said, placing his hand upon the small of Sansa’s back, “and you’ll wish you were getting decked by some drunk lug.”

 

“I would _never_ touch your fairy,” Allard called out as he crossed the stockroom to grab the vodka he needed in the first place. “I value my life too much!”

 

“Good,” Sandor called back, and he escorted Sansa towards the door. Sansa hurried forward to join her friends on the other side of the counter, and Sandor went behind the bar to go back to work. He saw Sansa chattering with her two friends, and when he found a moment to come back to their end of the bar, Margaery raised her icy blue eyes to Sandor and gave him another one of her smirks. She was a pretty girl, and she seemed nice enough despite being a brazen flirt, but Sandor didn’t like her smirks. He didn’t like them at all.

 

“You should come with us to a costume party,” Margaery suggested to him, but Sandor immediately shook his head.

 

“I don’t do costumes, and I don’t do parties,” Sandor said curtly.

 

“Oh, you should go!” Tyrion suddenly exclaimed from beside Margaery. “Come on, if I was ten years younger and these fabulous ladies invited _me_ , I would go.”

 

“No,” Dany cut in beside him with an acidic tone, “we _no_ go.” Leaning forward over the countertop to look past Tyrion, Dany glared daggers at Margaery as if Margaery had invited her husband to go to this costume party and not Sandor. Margaery glared right back at the woman, though. Sandor thought it was funny because Dany, despite wearing a silver shimmery dress that wasn’t part of any particular costume, wore a pair of bunny ears on top of her head. Tyrion’s inside joke, Sandor was sure, because Dany probably had no idea she was supposed to be a Playboy bunny for Halloween. Still, watching as a Playboy bunny glared down Little Red Riding Hood in his bar was on the list of things Sandor never thought he would see in his entire life.

 

“It could be fun,” Sansa suggested from Margaery’s other side, though she sounded unsure about it. Sandor turned his head to look at Sansa in time to see her friend, Jeyne, nodding her head beside Sansa.

 

“Yes, it could be fun,” Jeyne added happily. “You should come with us! It’s a college party, but seniors show up, too. Anyway, it’s not all young kids, so you won’t feel out of place. There are older people who go, too—”

 

“Oh, please,” Margaery cut in, “Sandor’s not _old_. Are you, Sandor?”

 

Sandor refused to look at Margaery while she was using that sultry tone on him. It wasn’t like he was going to fall for it, but something told him she might be pressing her chest against the counter again, and Sandor didn’t want to get caught looking at it a second time. Sansa might not be so forgiving if he kept doing it.

 

“He’s thirty-three,” Sansa said quietly.

 

Jeyne gasped, bringing her hands to her mouth. “I didn’t know he was _that_ ol—”

 

Sandor cleared his throat. “I’m right here,” he said.

 

Margaery giggled from her stool. “Oh, isn’t he just adorable,” she chimed in. “Well, you’re only as old as you _feel_ , Sandor. Don’t let Jeyne get you down. I’m sure Sansa can get you right back _up_ again.”

 

Tyrion spewed out half of the drink in his mouth across the counter beside Margaery.

 

“Fucking hell,” Sandor muttered in annoyance, reaching down to grab a rag to wipe up the mess with it.

 

“Sorry about that,” Tyrion said, looking abashed. “Sometimes you just _hear_ things. Awful, dreadful things . . . ”

 

“Watch it, Imp,” Sandor told him, lifting his eyes to glare at Tyrion.

 

“Hey, that’s an offensive term,” Tyrion protested with genuine anger, pointing a finger at Sandor. “I don’t appreciate being called an Imp. We do have things such as equality and respect these days, _sir_.”

 

“Call me sir again,” Sandor said, holding up the rag in his hands, “and I’ll shove this rag up your ass.”

 

“Your boyfriend is really attractive, Sansa,” Margaery suddenly said from beside Tyrion.

 

Sandor threw the rag down on the counter. “Okay, that’s it,” he said. “I’m going outside.”

 

He didn’t even bother to tell Steffon, Allard, or Asha where he was going or that he was stepping out for a break. If he stayed there for a one minute longer than necessary, Sandor just knew he was going to snap on somebody and it wasn’t going to be a pretty sight. Not even a few feet out of the entrance to his pub, Sandor turned around and saw Margaery, Sansa, and Jeyne all piling out of the door after him. However, Margaery and Jeyne kept their distance as Sansa approached him with slow and careful steps. She looked like she was freezing in her costume. Sandor saw shivers pass through her shoulders and arms. After all, it was cold out here and that dress was small and very thin. It took all of Sandor’s willpower to look at her face instead of her body.

 

“I understand if you don’t want to go,” Sansa said quietly, and she took another three steps forward until they were almost touching. “But there’s often a lot of drunk guys at those parties, and Margaery’s going to take us there whether you go or not. I would just feel safer if you were there with me. I’d hate to get there, you not be there, and me wish you were.”

 

Sandor let out a ragged sigh. “You want me to punch some poor unsuspecting fool?” he asked her, and Sansa smiled shakily at him.

 

“It’s better than the alternative,” she whispered, and though Sandor wasn’t sure what the alternative was supposed to be. Certainly, she wasn’t going to let some drunk guy get all over her, and then Sandor realized that was point. If Margaery or Jayne wandered off from her, Sansa wasn’t in a position to really protect herself all that much. Sandor had never been to college, but he heard enough about the college crowds to know they were full of entitled pricks who thought they could get their hands on everything. He didn’t like the idea of Sansa going to a party like that, even with friends by her side.

 

“I can take you home,” Sandor suggested as the thought struck him. “Let them go, and I’ll drop you off at your house.”

 

“It’s not dangerous,” Sansa told him, giving Sandor a pointed look. “It’s just uncomfortable.”

 

Again, Sandor couldn’t understand why she would even want to go if it would make her uncomfortable, but he wasn’t about to argue with her. Sandor had already walked on eggshells with Sansa regarding the morning he had woken up with a hangover from drinking again, and he didn’t want to go through another ordeal with her so soon or give her any reason to be upset with him. If she wanted to go to this party with her friends and she wanted him to come along with her, then Sandor didn’t see much of a choice left in it for him unless he wanted to hurt her all over again. However small a request it might have been, Sandor was afraid refusing might leave a mark.

 

“All right,” he finally said. “I’ll go with you.”

 

Sansa’s face lit up at his answer, and she threw her arms around his middle for a hug. Before Sandor even knew it, he had gone back inside to tell Allard he was leaving for the night. Allard and Asha bid him farewell. Steffon was in the middle of serving a patron, so Sandor grabbed his keys and jacket and left the pub. He and Sansa took his car, while Margaery and Jeyne rode in Margaery’s vehicle. The last thing Sandor was going to do was ride with three teenage girls to a party in one vehicle.

 

As he followed behind Margaery’s car, Sandor turned on the heater for Sansa’s benefit. She looked like she was freezing still, and so Sandor passed his jacket over to her. “You should take your wings off,” he told her, “and put that on.”

 

“It will ruin my costume,” Sansa said, though she sounded like she’d much rather be wearing his jacket than thinking about her costume.

 

“I’m sure no one’s going to be paying attention to a ruined costume,” Sandor informed her, and he glanced over at Sansa to see her staring down at his jacket laid across her lap. Finally, Sansa unbuckled long enough to slip off her wings and put them into his backseat before sliding on his oversized jacket. Sansa buckled up again once she was done. “Better?” Sandor asked, keeping his eyes on the road this time.

 

“Better,” Sansa said softly, and he glanced over briefly to see her smiling.

 

Margaery drove them all the way to the dorm grounds of Hightower University in a section of Kingsland referred to as Oldtown, which earned its name because it was the oldest part of Kingsland. Hightower University was the biggest college in the city. There were some smaller community colleges and private colleges in the area, but Hightower was by far the largest of them all and with the biggest reputation. Sandor was already feeling uneasy the moment he saw the big crowds walking around outside. Most of them were dressed in costumes for the holiday, and most of them were definitely young college kids. He thought for the second time that this was a bad idea, but when he turned briefly to look at Sansa, she had an expression of awe on her face as she stared out of the windshield at everything surrounding them.

 

Sandor parked the car when he found a place for it, and he made sure to park close to Margaery and Jeyne. Sansa immediately hurried out of the car and over to her friends, while Sandor took his time. When he looked up at the building in front of them, it was a hall area strewn with Halloween lights and decorations. They had a few skeletons hanging by ropes from a large tree off to the right with signs dangling from their necks that read ‘traitor’ in big bold letters. The ground was littered with fake tombstones and bloody body parts. On the double doors to the hall, there was even a sign that warned against entry. It was just a prop for Halloween, but it made Sandor want to turn around and go back to his car immediately, dragging Sansa right along with him.

 

“Oh, he doesn’t have a costume!” Jeyne complained out of nowhere, which tore Sandor’s gaze away from the building and made him look at her. Margaery laughed at her friend and offered a suggestion that, to her, fixed the problem.

 

“Well, everyone grab one of his arms, and we’ll be set,” Margaery announced, suddenly sliding one of her arms around his and linking them together. Sandor bristled at the contact, but Sansa took a hold of his right arm as Margaery held his left, and the addition of Sansa calmed him down. Jeyne, thankfully, decided to just link arms with Margaery instead of trying to touch Sandor.

 

“I don’t get it,” Jeyne said. “How does this fix it?”

 

This was a damn good question, Sandor thought, because he was thinking the exact same thing. He had almost asked the question himself, but Jeyne had beaten him to it.

 

“He’s a pimp!” Margaery exclaimed happily, and she started walking the four of them towards the hall. If there had been a wall in front of them, Sandor would have run straight into it on purpose.

 

“Ohhh,” Jeyne said, finally getting it.

 

Past the entrance of the doors with the warning sign on them, they entered a large hall that was two stories high and full of costumed bodies. It was a light show of madness within its walls, painting the room in murky shades of red, orange, and yellow against a backdrop of dark corners. There was a balcony above with a DJ table, and above his head, a light up disco ball from which half of the lights sprang. Currently, they were playing a modern version of the song “I Put a Spell on You,” and three young women dressed up as witches were dancing to it by the DJ booth. Tables lined the walls with punch bowls and snacks, and Sandor leaned over to speak to Sansa. Because of the music, he had to raise his voice to make sure she could hear him.

 

“Don’t drink anything out of the punch bowls,” Sandor told her, and Sansa looked up at him curiously, but then her eyes went wide with realization at what he meant and she nodded her head. Sandor didn’t trust punch bowls at college parties, especially considering it already looked like there were a couple of people strewn across the floor in a few places once he could see past the swarm of bodies against the walls. Margaery let go of Sandor’s arm, and she and Jeyne wandered away from Sandor and Sansa. Sansa, however, held fast onto Sandor’s arm as she looked around the place.

 

“I’ve only been to a party like this once before,” Sansa admitted to him, having to raise her voice as well for him to hear her.

 

“Why did you want to come, then?” he asked.

 

Sansa shrugged her shoulders. “To be normal like everyone else, I guess.”

 

Sandor snorted, finding that amusing. “Yeah, by bringing your thirty-three year old boyfriend with you?” He looked down at her as he said this.

 

It was too dark and too red to tell if Sansa was blushing, but she had a look on her face that she usually got when she blushed out of embarrassment. “Well, when you put it like that . . . ”

 

“Ah, just ignore me,” Sandor told her. “I’m a grown up in a college crowd. I’m going to be uneasy.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Sansa said. “I shouldn’t have asked you to come—”

 

“Don’t worry about it,” Sandor dismissed, cutting her off. “I’m already here. Think of me as your bodyguard. That’ll make it less awkward.”

 

Sansa grinned at his suggestion. “Where’s your weapon?” she inquired, leaning into his side. “You can’t be a proper bodyguard without a weapon to protect me with.”

 

“My fists are weapons enough,” Sandor replied, and Sansa laughed at his answer. His mouth twitched at the corner with the smallest of smiles. As long as he could make her laugh, then it shouldn’t be too awkward. So far, nobody had commented on his presence, anyway. Sandor figured they were all too wasted out of their minds to notice him or even care.

 

“I’m going to go see if I can find Margaery and Jeyne real quick,” Sansa told him, disentangling herself from his arm and turning to face him. “Can you wait here for me?”

 

“You don’t want me to come with you?” Sandor asked, confused.

 

“I think they’re in the girls’ room,” Sansa said, raising her eyebrows to indicate that it wasn’t his place to follow her into the ladies’ restroom.

 

“I’ll be right here,” he told her, nodding his head. Sansa smiled at him and reached up on her tiptoes to give him a peck on the cheek before she turned around and hurried off through the crowd to find her friends. Sandor decided to wait right in place where he was, figuring it would be easier for her to find him again if he didn’t move. Surprisingly, no one bothered him or even tried to talk to him, which was fine by him. Sandor crossed his arms, surveying the crowd with a mild look of boredom when he heard a commotion up ahead near one of the punch tables.

 

He glanced up, squinting as he tried to see what was going on to cause such a loud racket. A crowd of people circled around something of interest, and coarse laughter bubbled up through the hall. Sandor saw a blonde haired boy raise a glass into the air and holler something out, a cruel tone to his voice, and suddenly, a cold feeling passed down into Sandor’s chest and gripped his heart. He pushed through the crowd to reach the scene just in time. Sansa was on the ground, surrounded by the jeering crowd, her dress torn, her hair a mess, and the jacket he had given her missing from her shoulders. When she raised her head, Sandor saw a bloody lip and punch streaks on her lower face.

 

In one swift motion Sandor turned to the boy, who he remembered as Joffrey from the first night in his pub when he had met Sansa, and punched him so hard in the face that the boy flew into a couple of people standing behind him. They all landed against one of the refreshment tables, and the combined weight caused the flimsy table to topple over with Joffrey and the other boys on top of it. The whole crowd gasped and stepped back, keeping their distance from Sandor. As for him, he turned around immediately to lift Sansa from the floor and hoist her over his shoulder. No one tried to stop him as he carried her out of the hall and into the cool night air beyond it.

 

Margaery and Jeyne would just have to make it on their own. Sandor wasn’t staying another moment, or Joffrey was going to end up dead if Sandor had anything to do with it. He brought Sansa back to his car, carefully setting her in the passenger seat and kneeling down beside her next to the open door. Sandor turned Sansa’s head to get a good look at her face, checking the wound on her lip. Sansa didn’t say anything, and she even tried to turn her head away from him, but Sandor held her with firm and gentle hands to inspect her face. The cut on her lip wasn’t that bad, and there was no bruising or other marks anywhere on her body that he could see. Her dress was also torn, and Sansa was trying to hold it up without exposing herself. Without his jacket to give to her, Sandor had nothing but the shirt on his own back.

 

He had a white t-shirt on beneath it, anyway, so he took off his outer shirt and wrapped it around her shoulders to cover her. Even if he hadn’t been wearing an undershirt, Sandor still would have taken the shirt off his back to protect her modesty. He helped Sansa put her arms through each of the sleeves, and then he buttoned it up until she was properly covered again. When he was done, Sansa sat there in numb state of shock, and Sandor decided it would be best if he got them out of there quickly in case any brave and drunken idiots got the idea in their heads to follow them out into the parking lot for revenge.

 

Sandor could have driven her home, but his first thought had been to take her over to his place. He wasn’t sure if Sansa wanted to have to explain anything to her parents, and on top of that, she wasn’t talking. Admittedly, Sandor was also a little afraid that her parents might think whatever had caused this in her was his fault and blame it all on him. It was the last thing he wanted, so he thought it best to take her to his place, deal with it on his own, and then take her home.

 

Once they reached his apartment building, Sandor carried her up to his place. Sansa could have walked on her own, but she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her face to his chest, so Sandor figured she didn’t much mind his decision to carry her. He brought her inside, kicked the door shut, and carried her to his bedroom to place her down upon his bed. After all, his bedroom was closer to the bathroom than his couch, and he was going to get some things from the bathroom to help him tend to the cut on her lip. Sansa lay down where he placed her, curling up into a ball and squishing the pillow close with her arms underneath it. The sight of her in such a condition caused his heart to constrict painfully, and Sandor tightened his lips together in a thin line.

 

He could have called the police, but if he had broken something in Joffrey’s face, then they would have probably arrested him instead of Joffrey. Not only that, but Sandor hated the police. They hardly ever did their jobs proper. On top of that, Joffrey was the son of the mayor, and the people at the party were his friends. They could have all chosen to testify to a different story of what happened, and Sandor was not about to get caught up in some bullshit over that. He had dealt with the situation his way, and Joffrey had better pray to whatever god he believed in that Sandor never ran into him alone in the future. If he did, Joffrey would be lucky if he even got out of that confrontation alive.

 

Sandor left Sansa on his bed to exit his bedroom and fetch some things out of the bathroom across the hall. When he returned, he knelt beside the bed.

 

“Sansa, can you sit up?” he asked her, and though he wanted his voice to sound soothing and calm, it was far from it. Sandor was boiling over with carefully contained rage on the inside. Despite that, Sansa slowly sat up on his bed as he bid of her. Her back was hunched, giving him easier access to her lip, and Sandor gently took her by the chin to pull her closer and inspect her lip once more. The cut was small, and the bleeding had stopped. He took a wet rag he had prepared in the bathroom and wiped her face clean of punch with tender motions. “What cut your lip?” Sandor inquired as he let go of her chin to prepare a cotton swab with some ointment.

 

“Joffrey,” she said in a whisper, “backhanded me. His ring—caught on my lip.”

 

Sandor felt his lips draw even tighter together. He raised his head and took her by the chin once more, carefully dabbing the spot on her lip that was split open. Sansa winced, but otherwise did not move away from him.

 

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” he asked, pulling the cotton swab away. Sansa nodded her head. “Where?” Sandor asked further, and in answer to his question, Sansa slowly moved one of her hands to her side and let it hover there without touching it. Sandor hesitated in asking his next question, but he asked it anyway. “Can I see?”

 

Sansa nodded her head again, and she seemed unfazed by his question. Sandor watched as she slowly unbuttoned the shirt he had put on her in the car, and his heart rate started to quicken despite the seriousness of the situation. Clearly, Sansa was comfortable with it because he was trying to help her, but Sandor realized that meant she was going to be half naked in front of him, sitting on the edge of his bed. Still, Sansa finished unbuttoning the shirt, and then she pushed it off her arms one sleeve at a time as she held her torn dress in place to keep her chest covered up. She wasn’t wearing a bra underneath it, Sandor had realized back at the college campus, but it had hardly mattered to him at the time.

 

Though she was his girlfriend, and though they were in a relationship together, Sandor had never seen her naked before. He turned his head out of respect for Sansa given the situation. He wanted to look. Fucking hell, he wanted to look so bad—but he also wanted the first time he saw her body to be for much different reasons than this. When his head was turned, he noticed out of the corner of his eyes as Sansa continued to undress. Carefully, she tried to balance between covering her breasts with one arm and pushing down her torn dress with the other until it was hugging her hips. When she got it down all the way, Sansa brought both arms to her chest to cover her breasts more efficiently, and Sandor turned his head back to her at last.

 

Right there, at the inward curve of her waist, was a large and newly blossoming bruise. It was pinkish red in color with no purple or blue discoloration yet because it was so fresh, and Sandor swore under his breath at the sight of it. He reached up to cover his mouth with his hand, rubbing his fingers over his lips. He was going to kill that boy if he ever saw him again. He was going to grab him by his fucking neck and choke the life out of him.

 

“Does it hurt?” Sandor asked her, feeling like he couldn’t stop asking fucking useless questions. Of course, it hurt. The size of it alone meant a lot of force went behind it. Sansa didn’t outwardly answer him, though. She just nodded her head in response. “How did you get it?”

 

“Meryn threw me,” she said in a small voice. “Into the table.”

 

Sandor was going to kill him, too.

 

“Can I cover up now?”

 

Sandor looked up into Sansa’s face. She didn’t look uncomfortable, but maybe she just didn’t see the point of keeping her clothes pulled down for a bruise. Sandor nodded his head. “Sure,” he said, pushing himself up onto his feet. “Let me get you some clothes to wear.” Her dress was torn, and there was no point in wearing that thing any longer.

 

Sansa got up from the bed and walked to his bathroom. When she came back, she had fixed her hair and scrubbed off her makeup. Her lip was beginning to bruise, though. Sandor would have to take her home like that, he realized, and her parents weren’t going to be happy about it. He handed her some oversized clothes for her to put on, even though she had already fixed her dress and buttoned up his shirt over it again. Sansa accepted the clothes and sat down on the edge of his bed to carefully wiggle into them without exposing herself, choosing to not go back into the bathroom again. Sandor was surprised by this, and though he looked away last time, he couldn’t bring himself to look away this time.

 

She slipped into the bottoms easily enough without showing anything off, but she had to take off his buttoned shirt again. Considering her dress was a tube style, she could have pulled his extra shirt on, which was smaller than the first one he had given her and would fit her better, and then slid out of her dress. Instead, Sansa slightly turned her head to glance over her shoulder at him before looking forward again. Sandor watched as she slowly pulled her dress down, her back to him, and slipped the material underneath her bottom and off via her legs. She then pulled on his new shirt with the same deliberate slowness to the motion, slipping one arm into its sleeves at a time. It might have been because she was hurt, but it might have been for other reasons, too. Sandor wasn’t sure, but he loved seeing the way in which her smooth and elegant back rippled with each movement of her body in the moonlight.

 

When she was done, she laid back against his bed again. Careful not to lie on her bruised side, Sansa turned her head to him instead of her whole body. “Are you just going to stay over there?” she asked him softly, and Sandor wondered why she was lying down when he should be bringing her home.

 

“Don’t you have to go home?” Sandor inquired right back, and Sansa shook her head.

 

“I texted Arya to tell Mum and Dad not to worry, that I was at your place,” Sansa told him.

 

“That’s only going to _make_ them worry,” Sandor responded, feeling it was the truth.

 

“They’ll get over it,” Sansa whispered, her arm spread out over his bed towards him, her hand outstretched and open, and her hair a cascade over his pillows.

 

Sandor realized his mouth was dry, but that he wanted to answer her. He found no other words to answer her with, though, so he crossed the distance and crawled onto his bed. He didn’t want her to come to him with her side in pain, so Sandor went to her until he was lying beside her upon the sheets. As gently as possible, he laid his arm over her hips instead of her waist. Sandor almost leaned his mouth towards her shoulder to rest it there, but Sansa turned towards him and tilted her temple against his forehead. She then craned her neck in the slightest of gestures, nuzzling her nose to his nose in the dark.

 

“Thank you,” Sansa whispered, “for being everything I ever wanted.”

 

Sandor didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing at all, but he never once let go of her as they lay there upon his bed together. In the softly swaying shadows caused by the moonlight outside of his bedroom window, he thought at various times that he should get up from the bed and take her home. Sansa ought to get back before it grew too late into the night, but he couldn’t bring himself to move from his spot beside her. If Sansa wanted to stay because this was where she wanted to be, then Sandor was all right with that, even if her parents wouldn’t be all right with it in the morning.

 

He didn’t know how he was everything she ever wanted. Half of the time, he was fucking something up or making her cry. Sandor wasn’t the smoothest guy on the planet, nor was he the kindest. As evidenced by their talk earlier, he still had some problems he was trying to work his way through in his new life for himself. Trying to be a better person and sticking with it was harder than it looked, even after two and half years of a life separate from his old one. Saying it was easy, but performing it was another matter altogether.

 

Somehow, in her eyes, he was what she wanted, though. He didn’t understand it. Not yet, anyway, but maybe one day he would get it. Until then, Sandor would just have to make sure he never let her go or did something to drive her away because she was everything he had ever wanted, too, and didn’t even know he wanted until he had met her. It was strange to have desires that had been a secret hidden from him, or maybe he had just never let himself believe that he could have those things before. Maybe, deep down, he had always wanted them, but he never let himself think they could happen to a person like him.

 

Sandor wasn’t tired yet, but he stayed in the bed with Sansa until she fell asleep, and then he carefully removed himself without waking her. He walked over to his door, turning around to glance back at the sight of Sansa sleeping peacefully in his bed. Sandor stared for a moment, but then he turned away and closed the door behind himself.

 

Fishing his phone out of his pocket, Sandor dialed Catelyn’s number out of his contacts list as he walked into his living room. It only took two rings before Sansa’s mother answered the phone.

 

“Hello?” Catelyn asked quickly, a hint of worry in her tone.

 

“Hey, it’s me,” Sandor told her. “I wanted to call you because Sansa is here, and she’s asleep in my bed right now. She had a run in with her ex-boyfriend, and she’s really shaken up about it—”

 

“What happened?” Catelyn demanded, cutting him off. “Is she all right?”

 

“She has a split lip,” Sandor answered, though a little reluctant to give away the information, “and a bruise on her side.”

 

Catelyn was silent for a moment. “Was it Joffrey?”

 

“Yes,” Sandor said. Catelyn cursed at his answer, but Sandor added, “Don’t worry. He probably looks much worse.”

 

“What did you do?”

 

“I punched him,” Sandor informed her, perhaps a little too happy about it. “In the face. Really hard.”

 

“ _Good_ ,” Catelyn said. “She’s asleep, you said?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I would say we will come get her, but if she’s asleep . . . ”

 

“You’re more than welcome to come get her, if that’s what you want to do,” Sandor told Catelyn, though in all honesty, he didn’t want them to wake Sansa up, not after the ordeal she just went through, and he hadn’t been there sooner to stop it from happening . . .

 

Sandor closed his eyes, covering them with his free hand, and shook his head. It was no good thinking on things like that.

 

Catelyn was quiet again before she answered him. “I think she’s in good hands right now,” she admitted softly. “But tell her to call me when she wakes up, please.”

 

“All right,” Sandor said. “I will.”

 

“Thank you,” Catelyn told him, “for calling me and telling me what was going on. It’s too late to do anything about it tonight, but we will deal with this in the morning. I just . . . would rather let her sleep right now.”

 

“You’re welcome, and that’s understandable.”

 

“Well, goodnight,” Catelyn said.

 

“Goodnight,” Sandor said right back, and he hung up the call. That went a lot better than he expected, which was a good thing. If he wanted her parents’ trust and respect, then he was going to make an effort to earn it, and this was a start. It wasn’t like Sansa was staying over at his place because she wanted to break the rules for fun, and he wanted to make sure Catelyn knew that.

 

Sandor paced around his living room for a while, trying to think of something to do to occupy himself. He thought about staying up and watching some television because he wasn’t sleepy yet, but he wasn’t very interested in the idea. Instead, Sandor returned back to his room, crawled into the bed once more, and curled up close to Sansa’s side to hold her as she slept. Even though he was wide awake for well over an hour, just staring at Sansa or nuzzling against her shoulder, he eventually found sleep beside her.

 

Come morning, Sandor hadn’t wanted her to wake up without him there, not after what she had been through tonight. He wanted to be right there by her side as he should have been earlier, so she didn’t wake up alone.

 

 


	61. All My Scars are Open

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** This chapter contains a memory of what happened at the party in the previous chapter. Trigger warning for violence against women.

_* * *_

 

Sansa blinked open her eyes to the dim blue light of early morning. Upon waking up, she immediately felt a searing pain as it throbbed through the left side of her body from lower ribcage to hip. Sansa winced at the sensation, a little hiss escaping her lips. She rolled over to lie on her stomach now that she was awake to take the pressure off of her bruised waist. During the night, she must have rolled over into her usual sleeping position upon her side. Given the injury she had received on her waist after being thrown into the table by Meryn at the college party, Sansa thought her body would keep her off her side by means of instinct throughout the night. However, she hadn’t been so lucky. Her muscles screamed in protest against the weight she had put on her bruise unknowingly in her sleep, and Sansa pushed herself up from the bed with care not to hurt herself any further. She turned her head to glance over her shoulder. Sandor was lying on his stomach at the other end of the bed, still fast asleep, with one of his arms curved above his head atop the pillow.

 

Deciding not to wake him, Sansa slipped off of the bed and padded her way to the bathroom across the hallway. There were clean towels and washcloths stacked on a metal rack against the wall, so Sansa grabbed one of the towels along with a washcloth. She hung the towel over the shower door, and then she stripped down and stepped into the tub, closing the sliding door behind her. Hot water would help with the pain, Sansa thought, so she ran the water as hot as she could bear it and sunk down into a lying position in Sandor’s tub. There was no feminine body wash, shampoo, or conditioner, just a three-in-one masculine scented body wash and shampoo and shave solution. It was new because Sansa had never seen it before. Despite its scent, she used it because it was all Sandor had in his tub. Sansa was cautious not to scrub her hair and create tangles since there was nothing to help get them out once she got them.

 

The steaming heat from the hot water helped with her throbbing side. After she had washed herself up body and hair, Sansa lay back in the tub again and closed her eyes. She wanted to relax for a bit, and the soothing quality of the steam loosened her muscles and seemed to massage them into a state of peace and less ache. Eventually, she removed herself from the tub before her skin started to wrinkle. Sansa grabbed the towel and dried her hair with it first, moving to stand in front of the mirror. The reflection of her body in its foggy glass caused her to freeze in the middle of her movements. Her eyes had caught sight of the bruise upon the left side of her body, lying upon the inward curve of her waist. It had turned into an ugly dark purple and red splotch beneath her skin, and the towel fell from her hands as her vision blurred with tears.

 

Last night at the party, she had been walking towards the only brightly lit hallway in the colorful sea of darkness with a sign above it that pointed out the direction of the boys’ and girls’ restrooms. She hadn’t been paying attention to her surroundings, just looking upward and following the light, when a hand had reached out of the crowd and snatched her. The hand had belonged to Boros Blount, Joffrey’s friend, and he had laughed at the discovery of her attending the same Halloween party as him and his friends. Instinctively, Sansa had known who else was there with him. Her heart had frozen in her chest with the realization. Boros had called out for Joffrey, who had been in the middle of entertaining a large crowd of fake friends, and dragged her towards them as Sansa tried to struggle and escape his grip. A cold gleam had entered Joffrey’s eyes upon seeing Sansa, and he had grinned wickedly at her as he raised his glass into the air. He had called out for a toast to Sansa and her new boyfriend, whoever the hell that was, and Boros had grabbed her by the hair and throat to pull her head back as Joffrey tried to force the punch down her throat.

 

Sansa had fought back for the first time ever against them. She had kicked Boros between his legs, and he had lost his grip on her. Raising her hand, she had struck Joffrey across the face. Joffrey had backhanded her in return. His ring had caught on her lip, cutting it open. Sansa had raised her hand to hit Joffrey again, but Meryn had grabbed her wrist next to stop her, and then he had thrown her into the table so hard that she hit it, bounced off of it, and landed on the floor. The pain had been instantaneous, and tears had sprung unbidden into her eyes. Sansa had tried to crawl away, but Meryn had snatched at her dress upon Joffrey’s insistence, ripping the fabric open. Sansa had tried to clutch it close to her to cover herself, but the crowd had only laughed and jeered at her, and no one had tried to help.

 

Of course, until Sandor had come to her rescue. Sansa hadn’t wanted to be the damsel in distress in need of someone to protect her, but Joffrey was a sadistic and crazy ex-boyfriend with a crowd of faithful followers who loved him for his father’s position and his money. No matter how hard Sansa had tried to escape from him, it seemed he could still haunt her. Joffrey refused to leave her alone. Even though they were no longer together, he didn’t want to relinquish his power over her. Sansa had to avoid him in the hallways at school and bow her head in hopes that he never noticed her passing him by. She had even requested to be removed from a class once she discovered he was in it, too. Despite their breakup at the beginning of summer, Joffrey’s cruelty knew no end with her. He simply wouldn’t leave her alone.

 

Sandor’s fist had collided with Joffrey’s face, though, and threw him as well as three or four other boys straight into one of the refreshment tables in the party hall. Sansa knew nothing else after that but the way Sandor had picked up her, hoisting her over his shoulder, and carried her to safety beyond the jeering crowd who had wanted nothing more than to see her suffer. Sansa couldn’t even fathom why they wanted to see her suffer. She had done nothing to them, had never hurt any of them, and yet they all hated her as much as Joffrey hated her. The thought brought more tears to Sansa’s eyes as she stood there in front of the bathroom mirror, trying to piece together why this was happening to her and why she had to suffer through it.

 

Sansa bent down to pick up the fallen towel on the floor, and she wrapped it around her body and secured it at her chest by folding the corner under itself. Considering she hadn’t puked last night, she was sure Sandor wouldn’t mind her using his toothbrush, so she used it to brush her teeth and cleaned it afterwards before putting it back. Bending over a second time, Sansa scooped up the clothes Sandor had given her the night before. She then left the bathroom, returning to Sandor’s bedroom across the hall.

 

He was still asleep upon the bed in the same position as earlier. Sansa placed the clothes at the foot of his bed and walked over to his side to gently shake him awake. “Sandor,” she whispered to him, pushing at his shoulder. Sandor stirred from his slumber, blinking open drowsy eyes. When he managed to bring her into focus, Sandor quickly sat upright faster than she expected of him.

 

“Is everything all right?” he immediately asked with his voice on edge, sounding alarmed at whatever reason caused her to wake him.

 

“It’s worse,” Sansa whispered, tilting her head to the side as she looked at him with watery eyes, and she glanced down as she parted the towel along her side. Sansa was careful not to expose anything but the side of her body to show him the state of the bruise today. When she looked up at him again, Sandor was staring open-mouthed at the dark discoloration of her flesh with a look of mixed pain and fury in his eyes.

 

“Fucking hell,” he swore quietly, and Sandor reached out with his arm to place his hand upon her back and pull her towards him. He held her from the right side of her body instead of the left, avoiding her bruised side, and Sansa let the towel fall to a close before she moved to sit down in his lap. Wrapping her arms around his neck, Sansa leaned into him and hugged him close. Though her eyes were watery, she had no more tears to shed, so she just sat in silence upon his lap as she glided the tips of her fingers along his scalp. Sandor pressed his nose and chin against her shoulder, and his breath tickled her skin as his hand ran up and down in soothing motions along her back.

 

“I should have stopped it,” Sandor said against her shoulder.

 

“You did,” Sansa whispered, hating the guilt she heard in his voice.

 

“I should have stopped it before it happened,” he corrected himself, though the tone of his voice didn’t change.

 

“You didn’t know he was going to be there,” Sansa told him softly in an attempt to reason with him. Sandor shouldn’t have felt guilty over something he had no control over given the circumstances. “I didn’t know he was going to be there,” she added in an even quieter voice, flattening her hand against the back of his head to hold him there.

 

“What happened?” Sandor asked her. “You were only gone for a few minutes.”

 

Sansa swallowed past a lump in her throat and relayed what had happened last night at the party when she had left him to go find Margaery and Jeyne. She could feel it as Sandor tensed up beneath her during her story, but he was careful not to grip her with his hand because of the injury on her body. Instead, she felt him ball it up into a fist as she told him the whole story. When Sansa was finished, Sandor was quiet for some time.

 

“I called your mother last night,” he finally said, and this surprised Sansa. “She wanted you to call her when you woke up.”

 

She pulled away from Sandor to look him in the face, cupping his cheeks with her hands. Sandor stared back at her, looking a little confused by her reaction to cup his face, until Sansa smiled tenderly at him. “You called my mother?”

 

“I did,” he admitted, even though he had already said it once.

 

“What did she say?”

 

Sandor’s expression took on an affectionate quality that was not usual of him as he reached up and gently tucked her damp hair behind her ear with his fingers. “She didn’t want to wake you,” he told her, his low voice barely a whisper. His eyes scanned over her face, settling on her lips as he spoke. “She said it was all right if you stayed here. She wanted to hear from you first thing in the morning, though.”

 

Though surprised to hear this, Sansa was overwhelmed with love for her mother. Nothing had happened between her and Sandor last night, but she figured her mother might have panicked or feared that they would have sex simply because Sansa spent the night. Her parents were awfully fretful about her virginity, and to be honest, Sansa wasn’t sure why. They hadn’t minded it when Robb and Theon began messing around with girls, and they had been in high school at the time. As for Jon, Sansa wasn’t sure if he was still a virgin or not. Jon never talked about it, but he also hardly dated anyone or dated them for very long. When it came to Sansa, though, the rules were different. It agitated her to no end, too. The rules shouldn’t be different just because she was a girl. That wasn’t fair.

 

However, Catelyn had conceded last night, though it had been for more serious reasons. The knowledge still brought a happiness to Sansa that washed away some of the shame and humiliation from last night. She smiled even more noticeably at Sandor, leaning forward to place a kiss upon his lips. It was chaste press of lips to lips with no tongue. When she pulled back, Sandor blinked his eyes open at her with incomprehension in their depths.

 

“What was that for?” Sandor asked her.

 

“For calling my mother when I didn’t feel like talking to anybody,” Sansa said. “It will make a big difference to her that you called.”

 

“She sounded pretty relieved about it,” he confessed, raising his brow.

 

Sansa smiled at him again, running her thumb along his cheek like he sometimes did with her. “Because she knows that you care,” Sansa explained to him. “Can I hold your phone?” she then asked quickly, glancing around to see if it was on the bed. Hers was in her purse, which wasn’t anywhere near her. Sandor turned his upper body to the side to reach his arm over the bed and feel around for his phone. He found it underneath the sheets near one of the pillows and held it up to her. Sansa took it, dialing her mother’s number as she sat in Sandor’s lap with nothing on but a towel, and she wondered what her mother would think of that.

 

“Hello?” Catelyn’s voice said through the phone after the third ring.

 

Sansa smiled warmly at the sound of her mother’s voice instead of cringing in fear of getting in trouble. “Hi, Mum,” she said, “it’s me. Sandor said he called you last night, and you wanted me to call when I woke up.”

 

Catelyn sighed with relief on the other end of the line. “Yes, I did. Are you all right? Sandor told me you ran into Joffrey and that he hurt you—Joffrey, that is.”

 

“Yes,” Sansa admitted in a small voice, “he did, but Sandor stopped him.”

 

“Thank God,” Catelyn said, and Sansa could hear the genuine happiness in her voice that Sandor had been there to stop it from going any further. “Can Sandor bring you home, or do we have to come by to pick you up?”

 

“Sandor can bring me home,” Sansa told her.

 

“Okay,” Catelyn said with a compassionate tone in her voice. “Come home, then. Your father and I would like to hear the story from you in person, not over the phone, and we want to handle this business with Joffrey’s parents immediately—without bringing you. I don’t want you anywhere _near_ that little monster.”

 

“All right,” Sansa responded, though her voice had fallen to barely a whisper at the mention of them talking to Joffrey’s parents about last night. “I’ll be home,” she added, though she had to force the words out of her throat. Sansa ended the call, lowering the phone to her lap and staring at it numbly.

 

Sansa had no idea of what Joffrey had already told his parents or what sort of situation it could escalate into if Ned and Catelyn confronted Robert and Cersei about last night. That was the part that Sansa was afraid of, after all. She went to school with Joffrey, and what would happen if all of this was dragged into the halls of Blackwater High? She would be an endless topic of gossip, a social pariah, for something that had already dragged her into the mud a thousand times over and had already made her feel like less than a person. Given what she had been through with Joffrey, people ought to have shown compassion and kindness towards her if they found out about it, but no, she would be mocked and ridiculed for it instead—and Sansa couldn’t handle that.

 

Joffrey had mocked, ridiculed, beaten, and humiliated her enough. She couldn’t handle the whole school turning on her for being the girl who tried to ruin Joffrey’s life—because that was what it would turn into if it came to light. Joffrey would be the victim, not Sansa, and people would ask what did she do to him to make him act so hateful towards her. None of it would be Joffrey’s fault, no. All of the blame would be placed upon Sansa despite the fact that she had been the victim in the situation. These were Sansa’s fears, and they were very valid fears. Sansa had seen it happen to countless girls before her in similar situations. It was always the fault of the girls, never the boys and never the men. It was like men were held unaccountable for their actions, and women were held accountable for things that were far beyond their control.

 

Sansa would drop out, she realized, if it was brought into her school. She would drop out of Blackwater High, and maybe her parents could find another school in a nearby city for Sansa to attend until she graduated from high school. Sansa also wondered if it was possible to home school her last year before graduation. Not only that, but she would be going to college soon, and she would have to make sure she didn’t go to the same college as Joffrey. She was willing to bet on everything that Joffrey was planning to attend Hightower University upon graduation, or he wouldn’t have been there with all of his friends at that party. Surely, one of the smaller private colleges would be a better choice for Sansa. Jon went to a private college, and the focus on studies was stronger in those smaller environments than at the big universities.

 

Suddenly, Sansa heaved in a deep breath, realizing that she was crying once more. She shouldn’t have to _do_ all of this, Sansa thought. She shouldn’t have to _do_ everything in her power to try and protect herself twenty-four seven. People ought to have been held responsible for their own actions and for how they treated those around them. They ought to have been held accountable for their own crimes. Joffrey ought to have been responsible for himself. Sansa didn’t make him do these things to her. He _chose_ to do them. What had she done for it to be her fault? Did she hold a gun to his head and _ask_ him to beat her? Sansa didn’t understand it— _couldn’t_ understand it. People ought to have believed in fairness and justice. People ought to have been kind and gentle, courteous and compassionate, understanding and _good_ —

 

After she had gotten out a good cry and calmed down in all but her shaking nerves, Sansa realized that Sandor was holding her. He had carefully wrapped both of his arms around her body without touching her injured side and rested his chin on her shoulder from behind. Sansa couldn’t remember him saying anything to her. If he had said something, she might not have even registered it amidst her heavy sobbing. Sandor was silent now, though, just choosing to hold her instead of trying to speak or ask her what was wrong. When Sansa also realized it was because he already knew what was wrong, she bit down hard on her bottom lip to fight back a new surge of tears. He was the only one outside of her family and friends who would understand what she was going through in her position, and Sansa knew without having to ask that he was on her side. She clutched her arms around his arms, holding him tight with her hands as well, as she took one deep breath after another. Her back rose and fell against his chest behind her, and if she had ever doubted her feelings for him even once before, there was no more doubt in her at all about how she felt towards him anymore.

 

Sansa turned around in Sandor’s arms to hug him back, wrapping her arms around his neck as she had done earlier, but the twisting motion of her body pulled her towel loose. However, the press of her chest to his kept the towel in place so it didn’t fall down on her. Sandor hugged her back, and Sansa felt completely safe and protected in his arms. She pulled her head back just slightly to look Sandor in the face, their chests still touching and holding her towel upright, and Sansa leaned forward to kiss him. This time it was no innocent kiss. Her lips parted against his mouth, and she urged him to open his mouth with her tongue grazing past her lips. Sandor welcomed the kiss by responding to it the way she wanted of him, and she raised her hands to his face to hold him as she deepened it between them.

 

Her bottom lip was still a little sore, but it wasn’t so bad that it distracted her from kissing him. She twisted in his lap to raise herself somewhat, and the towel fell from her upper body to pool upon Sandor’s arms around her middle. Sansa’s chest pressed against his chest once more, and he seemed to realize the towel had fallen. He wouldn’t bring his hands to touch her naked skin, though. In fact, Sandor surprised her. He moved his arms back towards himself, careful enough to keep the towel from falling down any further, until he could grab the edges of it. With a firm grip, he tugged the towel back up to cover her with the soft material again, even as they kissed each other. Sansa pulled away from his lips, pulling back her upper body some as well, and Sandor’s eyes instinctively fell downwards to look—but only for a split second before he raised them higher than before to look upward at the ceiling, his lips drawing into a tight line.

 

He looked upset with himself, which Sansa thought was silly. Suddenly, she wasn’t so bothered with the idea of him looking at her. She had been concerned with it last night, making the extra effort to cover her breasts, but she wasn’t trying to cover them now. Sansa leaned her face closer to his without touching, and Sandor braved looking forward again. She was too close for him to properly look down at her chest this time.

 

“You can look,” Sansa whispered, but Sandor shook his head at her.

 

“If I look, I’m going to touch,” he said quickly. “I can’t just look, Sansa, and you went—” Sandor paused, taking a deep breath to steady himself. “You went through something pretty traumatic last night,” he explained to her in a calmer voice. “I can’t—” Sandor brought his hand to his face, pulling back just enough to rub it over his face from forehead to chin before he looked off to the side. “I can’t not think about that, and you were just crying. Your side is hurt—”

 

Sandor sounded like he was going to say something further, but Sansa was vulnerable and she was upset and he was right, and so her lip started to tremble as she began to cry all over again.

 

“Fuck,” Sandor swore, and he wrapped his arms around her upper body once more to hold her close to him. Sansa didn’t know if his cursing was because he hadn’t taken the opportunity, because she had started crying again, or because she had started crying again because of him. Sandor held her until she finished sobbing the last of it out of her system, keeping his hands either placed upon her upper back or in her hair. She clutched him tightly until her hands were hurting, and she felt him tracing his fingers gently across the upper corner of her back just below her shoulder. It both tickled and soothed her at the same time, though not enough to make her laugh. It was a pleasant tickle that caused her muscles to shiver in response, and the motions of his fingers helped to soothe her.

 

“You should get some clothes on,” Sandor suggested quietly, and Sansa took a deep breath as she lay against him, her chest pressed to his chest and her head lying upon his shoulder. He was right about that, too, she knew. She had to be getting home soon, and Sandor was supposed to take her. Sansa nodded her head at his suggestion, and then she maneuvered herself in his lap to close the towel over body without revealing her nakedness to Sandor’s eyes again. She felt foolish all of a sudden, telling him he could look. Of course, he would want to do more than just look at them, and she was in no state to be doing things like that. Sansa felt her face burning with embarrassment as she scooted off of Sandor’s lap, trying her best to hold onto the towel with a firm grip to keep it from slipping.

 

If Sandor saw the redness on her face, he said nothing about it. Sansa moved quickly, knowing she had to get home. She grabbed the clothes she had put on the edge of his bed and returned back to the bathroom to change into them. Once she was dressed in proper clothes once more, Sansa rubbed the towel over the tousled strands of her hair to dry it some more, and then she combed her fingers through it to get some of the tangles out. As she combed out her hair with her fingers, a flash of bright green color caught her attention over the corner of the counter. Sansa stopped what she was doing and straightened her back. Glancing down at the small garbage bin in Sandor’s bathroom, Sansa took one last look at her torn Tinkerbell dress that lay within it. A soft sigh escaped her lips at the loss of it, but it hadn’t been that important, anyway.

 

She stepped out of the bathroom into the hallway, but a few steps towards his bedroom door, Sansa noticed that Sandor wasn’t inside of his room anymore. Turning to look in the direction of his living room, she saw him moving about his apartment and looking for something. Sansa hurried into his bedroom to grab her shoes and slip them onto her feet, and then she scooped up her purse and wandered into the living room. Sandor had found whatever he had been looking for because now he was standing by the door, waiting for her with his keys in hand.

 

“Are you ready?” Sandor asked her, raising his eyebrows with the inquiry. There was so much more underneath the question. Sandor was a simple man with his words, but she knew what lay beneath them just by hearing the tone of concern in his voice as he spoke to her. It was more than just him asking her if she was ready to go home. Sandor was asking her if she was ready to face this. He was asking her if she was ready to talk to her parents about it—and if she was ready to have them deal with the situation regarding Joffrey. He was asking her if she was ready for what might come as a result of it and asking her if now was the right time for her.

 

Despite everything that lay in front of her, Sansa knew she had to face it. She couldn’t spend her life avoiding the inevitable. If Joffrey wasn’t going to stop, then this was the only way. Sansa wasn’t sure what her parents had in mind to do about the situation, but she was sure they would take care of it. Her parents loved her, and they would do everything in their power to protect her, regardless of the cost. Sansa realized she trusted whatever their decision might be without even knowing it yet, and she managed a small smile in Sandor’s direction at this newfound insight inside of herself.

 

“Yes,” Sansa answered him with a perfectly steady voice and a clear mind, which only brightened her smile. Sandor’s expression softened at her admission. He opened the door for her to pass through it first, and Sansa stepped out of his apartment with Sandor not far behind her.

 

He shut the door behind them with a resounding _thud_.

 

 


	62. Come Back to the Middle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** At the end of this chapter, I’ve included a list of songs so far whose lyrics inspired the chapter names, covering Chapter 53 through Chapter 62!

_* * *_

 

Ned tapped his foot impatiently onto the floor as he sat hunched over in one of the chairs within their living room, his hands folded in front of him. He was waiting on Sansa to arrive home. After the call from Sandor’s phone to Cat’s phone last night, Ned had been worried sick. Given the call, he hadn’t been worried about Sandor, though. Somehow the phone call had soothed Ned’s distrust towards the man. Sandor had bothered to call Cat when he didn’t have to tell them anything or report to them for any reason at all, and that had spoken multitudes to Ned as a father. That one simple phone call had meant the world to both of them as parents, and Ned was going to make sure he properly thanked the man for it.

 

Despite his newly found lack of distrust, he had wanted to pick up Sansa immediately last night, but Catelyn had insisted that they let her sleep. Ned hadn’t liked the idea of Sansa sleeping over at Sandor’s apartment, but Catelyn had seemed to think it was all right. If Joffrey had hurt Sansa and Sandor was looking out for her, then Catelyn had told him she wasn’t bothered by it. Ned had tried to follow in his wife’s footsteps to not to be worried about it either, but at first he was worried simply out of fatherly principles. He had paced around their living room and kitchen for a good hour or two, contemplating the idea of getting into his car and driving straight over to Sandor’s to scoop up his daughter and bring her home.

 

Sometime during the night as he had paced about their house restlessly, Catelyn had come to him because he hadn’t joined her in their bed yet. She had approached him with a loving look in her eyes, laid her hand upon his arm, and said, “Please, Ned, leave her be.”

 

It had taken all of Ned’s willpower to concede to his wife’s wishes, but he had done it for her and for their daughter’s sake in the end. Cat was right in that they shouldn’t have woken Sansa up after the torment she had just been through that night because of Joffrey, but it made Ned anxious to not know all of the events of what had transpired between Joffrey and Sansa. He had heard from Cat through Sandor that Sansa’s lip was split and her side was bruised, but what had caused it? What exactly had Joffrey done? These questions had been plaguing Ned all night and all morning. When Sansa had called not even twenty minutes ago, it had intensified the feelings even worse.

 

A knock on the front door broke Ned from his reverie, and he quickly got up from the chair to go answer it. Sansa normally had a key, so Ned was wondering who had shown up at their house this morning. On the other side of the door, though, stood Sansa in a too big t-shirt and too big shorts that were clearly made for a man, which were probably only staying put because of a belt. Her hair looked damp and tousled, and her lip had a dark red cut that was already sealed up. There was also a small mark of bruising around the cut itself. Thankfully, it was nothing worse. Ned’s first instinct was one that he followed almost immediately upon seeing his daughter. He reached out for Sansa and drew her into his arms, hugging her to his chest with a gentle embrace.

 

Ned looked up, then. He hadn’t noticed Sandor standing there behind Sansa at the door, but there the man was, not even a foot away from Sansa. Having been too caught up in his initial concern over his daughter, Ned hadn’t registered anything beyond her until he had looked up on purpose. Ned removed himself from Sansa, though, and glanced down at her to offer her soft smile.

 

“Go on inside, Sansa,” Ned told her, cupping the back of her head. Sansa smiled back at him, nodded her head, and walked past him to go into the house. Ned turned his attention to the other man once Sansa was safely inside of their home again.

 

There was a long stretch of silence between them. Ned stared at Sandor, and Sandor stared at Ned. Ned wondered which one of them would say something first. When it seemed like Sandor wasn’t going to say anything and kept his silence as if waiting on a cue from Ned to allow him to speak, Ned held out his hand to the other man. Sandor glanced down at it, confusion etched across his features at the gesture of an extended hand before him, but then he raised his eyes back to Ned’s face. Ned kept his hand outstretched, waiting for an answer to it.

 

Sandor reached out and clasped his hand, and Ned gripped back for a firm handshake between the two of them.

 

“Thank you,” Ned said with genuine respect directed towards the man standing in front of him, “for protecting my daughter and bringing her home safely.”

 

Sandor looked as though he did not know what to say to that, but he slowly nodded his head in response. “You’re welcome,” he said. Sandor’s eyes flitted into the house momentarily before looking back at Ned, and then he added, “But I didn’t do it for you. Or for Catelyn. I did it for Sansa. Just so you know that.”

 

Needless to say, Ned was impressed with Sandor’s answer. Some people might have found it offensive to be dismissed so easily, but Ned was anything but offended by it. It was clear through Sandor’s actions that he held some true feelings for Sansa, however awkward their age difference might have been for Ned. Sandor had gone through a lot of trouble for someone he didn’t have to go through so much trouble for unless he had wanted to do it, and his choices spoke louder than anything else about him.

 

Ned hadn’t liked the idea of Sandor seeing Sansa for various reasons. For one, Sandor was just too old for Sansa. Secondly, the man had a past criminal record, though Ned had ever delved into the details of it. Thirdly, Sandor ran a pub. Ned didn’t know why, but he hadn’t liked that very much either. It wasn’t the most respectable of career choices, not that there was anything undignified about it, but Ned had imagined things like doctors or lawyers for his daughters like any good father would want for his girls. Of all things, he had never imagined a pub owner.

 

The fourth and final reason, however, had been the simplest of them all. Sandor had lied to him. Ned had for the longest time never forgiven the act—at least, not until now. He felt like now he could finally let it go. Sansa wanted to see him, and Sandor wanted to see her, and it was obvious there was something more than just plain attraction between the two of them. Ned’s biggest fear had been Sandor trying to take advantage of his daughter and hurting her in the end, but Sansa had known the man for well over six months now, and nothing of the sort had happened to her. If Sandor had just wanted to find his fix in a pretty girl, he would have been long gone by this point. He would not have stuck around six months for a fix, even Ned knew that.

 

No, Sandor genuinely cared about Sansa. As they stood there staring each other down and trying to measure one another through gazes and words, Ned realized that Sandor’s age hardly mattered to him anymore. His criminal record hardly mattered anymore. Sandor running a pub hardly mattered anymore. Even Arya liked him, and Arya was a hard girl to please in almost all matters. She didn’t give her friendship easily, mocking most girls for silliness and most boys for stupidity. Most importantly of all, if Cat could accept Sandor in their daughter’s life, Ned was beginning to see how he could as well.

 

“As it should be,” Ned replied with a steady voice. “Sansa is the most important one in this situation.”

 

Sandor’s lips drew in a thin line, though his expression looked pleased with Ned’s answer. “She is,” he agreed, and that was what they had in common—the importance of Sansa. It was the only thing they needed to have in common for Ned to hold the other man in high esteem.

 

“Would you like to come in for some tea?” Ned offered, extending a hand of courtesy and friendship, but Sandor shook his head to decline it.

 

“I can’t,” Sandor said. “I have work today, and I’ve got a few things to take care of before I go in. But thank you. It’s kind of you.”

 

“You’re welcome,” Ned told him, understanding his reasons for declining it.

 

“Maybe some other time,” Sandor suggested, and Ned felt a small smile crease the corner of his mouth.

 

“Sure,” Ned agreed, and he bid a final farewell to Sandor before closing the door.

 

Ned found Sansa upstairs in her room with Catelyn, and Ned joined them to talk with Sansa about the night before with Joffrey. When she had filled him in on all of the details, Ned kissed her forehead and told her to rest today before he and Catelyn left her room. Ned quietly closed Sansa’s bedroom door behind himself, and he lifted his eyes to meet Catelyn’s gaze. Her arms were crossed over her middle, her forehead creased with worry, and the expression in her eyes faltered between cold anger and pain.

 

“We ought to get a restraining order,” Catelyn whispered below her breath, not speaking too loudly in fear that Sansa might hear them talking outside of her bedroom door.

 

“Joffrey or Sansa will have to change schools if we do that,” he answered her, lowering his voice as well.

 

“Good,” Catelyn said. “Joffrey can leave Blackwater High for all I care.”

 

“Let us go talk to Robert and Cersei,” Ned proposed to his wife, “and see where that takes us first. Robert ought to do something about his boy. I bet he has no idea about it. Robert wouldn’t stand for this sort of behavior against Sansa. If he respects me as a friend and a brother, which I know he does, he would not stand for it.”

 

“Robert’s a different man from the boy you grew up with,” Catelyn warned him.

 

Ned shook his head, though. “He’s not so different,” Ned told her. “He’s just worse.”

 

“Meaning he’s different,” Catelyn pointed out, raising her eyebrows to highlight her position on the matter.

 

“Let us talk to him,” Ned repeated firmly, and he took his wife by the hands as he looked her in the eyes. “Please, Cat.”

 

Catelyn let out a ragged sigh, conceding at last. “All right,” she said. “Let me just get my things.”

 

The drive to the Robert’s manor took a while due to city traffic, but it wasn’t too long off of the main highway when they finally reached the gate that blocked off the driveway. Ned pulled up, used the intercom to announce his presence, and the gate slowly opened up to let them pass. He drove up to the manor house down a long pathway bordered by neatly trimmed hedges. All of them lacked flowers, which was most likely at Robert’s behest. Ned remembered an argument between Robert and Cersei once when they had first purchased the property. Cersei had demanded flowers for the hedges around the house and driveway, and Robert had bulldozed the idea in less than two seconds flat.

 

Ned parked the car near the end of the driveway upon a curve right behind another vehicle, a polished black Camaro that belonged to Robert. It was one of Robert’s many sports cars, and Ned wondered why this one was out of the garage today. Pushing the idle thought out of his mind, Ned exited his vehicle along with Catelyn, both of them shutting their doors at the same time. They walked side by side up to the widespread porch of Robert and Cersei’s home, which was a fine manor house done in brick with white accents along the windows and green accents along the edge of the roof. Its porch stretched across the entire front end of the house with roofing that overhung it to give its visitors a cool shade to stand in away from the sun.

 

Raising his fist, Ned knocked on the door and waited for an answer from within the house. Given their alerted presence at the gate, the door was opened in less than a minute from his knock. Cersei Lannister stood on the other side, wearing a white pencil skirt suit with her hair up in a bun on the back of her head. She looked between Ned and Catelyn with her usual degree of disdain, stepping back from the door and opening it further to let them pass into her home.

 

“I take it Robert is expecting you?” Cersei asked of them, closing the door behind them. Ned turned around to face her, shaking his head in response.

 

“No,” Ned told her. “Our visit is a bit of a surprise today.”

 

“Well,” Cersei said to that, “today has been full of surprises. What’s one more?” She turned around without beckoning them, heading down the hallway. “Follow me,” Cersei called out, sounding bored. “I’ll take you to him.”

 

She led the way to the dining room, which was large and elegant with a whole wall of nothing but floor length windows to let in the sunlight from outside. It painted the white wash of the room with a brilliant glow. Beyond the windows, the lush green lands of their expansive backyard could be seen as far back as the edge of the trees that lined the back of their property. There was a huge pool outside as well set into the white marble of a patio. Lawn chairs were strewn about in disarray, hinting at a recent use of them.

 

Robert was sitting down at the dining table, stuffing his face with a giant helping of baked seasoned chicken with piles of red and green vegetables and roasted potatoes on the side. He grinned widely at the sight of Ned and Catelyn, putting his food down onto his plate and rising to stand up on his feet.

 

“Ned!” he called out, holding out his arms, and Ned grinned back at him as he crossed the distance to hug his old friend. When Ned pulled away from him, Robert kept his arms outstretched as he gave Catelyn a warm smile, too. “Cat,” he drawled out, and Cat smiled back at him as she came over to his side to give him a hug as well. It was a lot friendlier between Ned and Cat with Robert than it was between them and Cersei. During the whole exchange, Cersei stood off to the side with her arms folded over her chest in an aloof and uninterested manner towards their display of friendliness.

 

“Please, have a seat,” Robert urged them, and he gestured at the table. Ned took a seat right along with Catelyn, and while Cersei did not leave the room, she remained standing near the kitchen counter, her arms still crossed over her chest. “What brings you here today?” Robert pushed forward, digging into his food once more.

 

“Sansa,” Ned immediately answered him, “and Joffrey.”

 

Robert froze in place from cutting his chicken, and an uncomfortable air arose in the room. “What happened?” Robert asked, an edge to his tone, though it was not directed at Ned.

 

“Last night at a Halloween party, Joffrey accosted Sansa with his friends Meryn and Boros,” Catelyn said with carefully controlled anger. “He slapped Sansa across the face, and they threw her into a table before ripping open her dress in front of a whole crowd of onlookers.”

 

Cersei laughed as if she found the whole thing ridiculous. “Oh, what is this nonsense—” she began, but Robert looked at her with a fury behind his eyes and pointed his knife at her.

 

“You be quiet, woman,” Robert ordered, and Cersei’s livid green eyes flared in a quiet rage towards her husband.

 

“You’re not seriously taking this into consideration?” Cersei demanded of Robert, but he ignored her and turned his attention to Ned.

 

“How many people saw this?” Robert asked him.

 

“An entire hall of them at Hightower University,” Ned replied in his calmest voice possible.

 

Robert sighed deeply, putting down his knife and fork. “There’s always been something wrong with that boy,” he said.

 

“There is _nothing_ wrong with our boy—” Cersei protested.

 

Robert slammed his fist against the dining table. “I said be _quiet_ ,” he roared at her, turning his furious dark eyes onto his wife. He uncurled his fist and looked back to Ned once more. “You’ve come here obviously because you want me to do something about it,” he said bluntly, “so what do you want me to do?”

 

“I want Joffrey to never get near Sansa ever again,” Ned said firmly. “I want him to never touch her, to never speak to her, and to never even look at her wrong, or I will involve the police in this as well as get a restraining order on him. Catelyn and I were talking about getting one this morning. We have discovered he has been violent with Sansa ever since the beginning of their relationship, and I will not stand for it another moment longer. If he ever lays a hand or a cruel word on our daughter again, I will make sure he loses use of that hand as well as his mouth.”

 

Robert snorted at that. “Well, whatever poor bloke punched him last night made sure of that second thing,” he replied, a bitter tone of amusement to his voice.

 

“What do you mean?” Catelyn asked.

 

“Joffrey got punched by somebody at that party,” Robert said, “and probably for what he did to Sansa, I’ll wager. Something in his face or his jaw got dislocated or something like that, and he couldn’t close his fucking mouth for hours.” Robert let out a hissing laugh, shaking his head. “Damn it, Ned. I tried to raise him right, but I haven’t really been there for the boy to teach him what it’s like to be a real man. I feel like this is all my fault somehow.”

 

“It’s not your fault, Robert,” Catelyn said kindly, “nor is it Cersei’s fault, but Joffrey must be held accountable for his actions.”

 

“I’ll pull him out of the school,” Robert said all of a sudden. “We’ll put him in some private institution, get him away from Sansa for good to make sure it doesn’t happen again. How does that sound? I don’t want a big scene out of this. Elections are coming up soon, and this would look really bad on me, Ned. It’s bad enough Tywin’s been shat on by his own son. I’d hate for mine to do the same thing to me.”

 

“What do you mean?” Ned asked him. “What happened to Tywin?”

 

“You haven’t heard?” Robert threw back at Ned. “Jaime’s been locked up. Arrested for dirty work on the side during his career. Fudged paperwork, falsified evidence, you name it. A big fuck up, Ned,” Robert said, shaking his head. “Cersei says it’s all bullshit, but Tywin’s out of the race already and his brothers are feeling the heat, too. It’s a damn shame to get dragged down by your son like that.”

 

Ned was shocked at this news. He had always thought Jaime Lannister was an upstanding officer of the law. To hear these things about him, it was downright shocking and hard to believe, but if Robert said it happened, then clearly, it must have been true. “I didn’t know,” Ned told him, his voice faltering.

 

Robert raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t know either,” he said, “but I guess we all have to pay for our sins at some point, eh?”

 

Ned glanced up to see if Cersei was still there leaning against the kitchen counter and listening to their conversation with her arms folded over her chest and that severe look on her face, but she was missing from the room and Ned wasn’t sure when she had walked out of it. It wasn’t like Cersei to remain silent on a topic such as this, especially since it involved her family, though he figured she must have stormed out during their talk about Joffrey.

 

Ned then turned his eyes back to Robert, feeling the weight of his friend’s words sinking heavy onto his own heart.

 

“I guess we do,” Ned agreed quietly, and his words were felt by everyone in the room.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 53\. You Have Broken Me All the Way Down – “All the Way Down” by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová  
> 54\. I Used to Know You So Well – “Decode” by Paramore  
> 55\. It’s a Revolution, I Suppose – “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons  
> 56\. The Place to Rest My Head – “Never Let Me Go” by Florence + the Machine  
> 57\. Dragging That Horse Around – “Shake It Out” by Florence + the Machine  
> 58\. Go Ahead, Make Your Choice – “Poor Unfortunate Souls” by Jonas Brothers (don’t judge me)  
> 59\. No Damsel in Distress – “Not A Pretty Girl” by Ani DiFranco  
> 60\. She Don’t Want the World – “She Don’t Want the World” by 3 Doors Down  
> 61\. All My Scars are Open – “Impossible” by Shontelle  
> 62\. Come Back to the Middle – “Back to the Middle” by India Arie


	63. You Change the Equation that I Add Up To

_* * *_

 

Renly hefted up a small black duffle bag, dropping it onto his desk. The weight of it caused it to thump against the hard wood surface as it fell down. Sandor stared at the bag, wondering if all of that paper money was such a good idea to be toting around in one spot like that. One wrong move into the right person, and all of that cash would be gone in a heartbeat. He lifted his eyes to Renly’s gaze across the desk, but Renly’s usual smile wasn’t there on his face. Renly appeared to be quite somber, which wasn’t very characteristic of him, but maybe he was glad to be done with Sandor after everything that had transpired between them because of this fucking job.

 

“There’s your payment,” Renly said, nodding his head at the black duffle bag. “Go cruise the shoreline and buy a house with it. Preferably one with a pool,” he suggested, and Renly looked thoughtful for a moment at his own proposition. “Girls love pools.”

 

For someone who didn’t like girls, Renly sure liked to talk about them all of the time. Then again, Sandor supposed it was meant to be a pep talk for him, and he _was_ interested in girls unlike Renly. Not that Sandor needed a pep talk upon receiving his payment, but old habits died hard, and Renly loved his pep talks.

 

“Why don’t I just go buy a fucking beach?” Sandor asked him with a sarcastic tone, and Renly brightened up at that idea.

 

“Ooh, that’s original,” Renly told him, pointing across the desk at Sandor. “I like your train of thought.”

 

“Where’s Loras?”

 

“He’s on patrol right now,” Renly answered, waving his hand about carelessly. “They’ve assigned him with Brienne now that Jaime is gone.”

 

Sandor nodded his head at this news. He wasn’t sure why he asked where Loras was right now. His curiosity might have gotten the better of him, but it was more than that, too. Though Sandor had the slip up with alcohol for hanging around Loras and Sarella while they were drinking, he didn’t blame that on Loras. That was his own damn fault, not Loras’s fault. Sandor still considered Loras as a friend—at least as far as Sandor considered anybody a friend, which wasn’t very far for most people.

 

“I take it he’s on day shifts now,” Sandor said, though why he was making idle conversation when he should have just been grabbing the money and getting the fuck out of there was beyond him.

 

“Sort of,” Renly replied casually. “They switch them back and forth. Sometimes day shifts, sometimes night.” Renly was silent for a moment. “Why the interest?”

 

“No reason,” Sandor told him, shrugging his shoulders. At last, he rose from the chair and reached over the desk to grab a hold of the handle on the duffle bag. “Well, I ought to be going. I’ve got work later.”

 

“Well, cheerio,” Renly said, leaning back in his seat. Sandor said nothing, only tilted his head slightly in a vague nod, and then he made for the door with the bag slung over his shoulders. There were no more words thrown at him to thank or congratulate him for a job well done, and Sandor was grateful for the lack of them. If he had to face more fake kindness or forced friendliness, Sandor wasn’t sure how well he would handle it. Renly had long since pushed at the last of his buttons, and right now wasn’t the time to push at any more of them. Everything was over and done, and Sandor wanted it to stay over and done. As he left Renly’s office, he never wanted to step foot into it ever again.

 

The only way he was going to cut the final ties to his old life was to cut Renly out of his new life. Sandor could handle Loras as long as he didn’t have to handle Renly, and Loras was enough of an adult to know that he shouldn’t try to bring Renly around Sandor after what had happened between them. Loras respected those boundaries of Sandor’s choosing, which might help them maintain some kind of friendship despite all of this shit. Loras had been right, after all. All those years ago when Sandor had saved Loras’s life from Gregor, they somehow made a bond after that. As unlikely a pair of friends as they made, they had known each other for a very long time. Loras had been practically a boy at the time. In fact, he had still been a teenager if Sandor remembered the events correctly.

 

It wasn’t the type of thing you forgot, knowing someone for that long. Sandor had never thought of people as friends in those days, never even used the word in his daily vocabulary, but now that he looked back on it, Loras had been his only friend. In his own and distant sort of way, so had Renly at times. Sandor had hated most people, mocked many of them, and plain just didn’t care about the rest of them, but if anyone had ever tried to fuck with Loras, they had Sandor to answer to for it. There had been times when they joked around that they were brothers. When the jokes had been first started by Loras, they had infuriated Sandor. Sandor had no good memories of what a brother was supposed to be, only what his brother had been, and Gregor was no model to base an idea of brotherhood upon, so his reaction to the use of the word had been visceral at first. Eventually, though, Sandor learned it wasn’t the word that he had a problem with, only it took a long time for him to figure it out.

 

After slinging the duffle bag into the passenger seat of the car, Sandor moved into the driver seat and shut the door. He cranked the engine and drove off from Renly’s club, taking the long way home. His work schedule today didn’t call him in for another couple of hours. Sandor had only told Renly he had work in order to slip out without lingering longer than necessary. The drive back home was silent because Sandor didn’t turn on the radio, nor did he care to hear any music right now, anyway. He pulled up to his apartment complex, slung the duffle bag onto his shoulder once more, and walked into the building to take the elevator up to his floor.

 

It was surprisingly quiet today. There weren’t a whole lot of people in sight, which was nice. Sandor liked the quiet. He hated too much noise, and living in an apartment meant being surrounded by the noise of neighbors twenty-four seven. Maybe Renly had a point. Sandor should buy a fucking house and get out of this place. It wasn’t as if he was hurting for money. Even without the payday hanging from his shoulder, Sandor was doing well for himself. He ran a successful business that pulled in a lot of money, and he kept his staff small and able to save costs and worked his ass off to make a higher profit margin. Idle hands were the devil’s playground, and he had heard that saying many times, so when he had started this business, he meant for it to keep him busy and keep him away from slipping back into his old life.

 

Sandor stepped into his apartment, closed the door, and locked it. He walked over to the kitchen counter and threw the duffle bag on top of it, staring at the crinkled black fabric and wondering if he should open it and take a look inside. It was dirty money, though. He had earned it through dishonest means. Anything he invested that money into would come back and hurt him in the end, collapse, or bite him in the ass, Sandor thought as he stared at that fucking duffle bag sitting on his kitchen counter. He ought to burn it, he thought further. Sandor entertained the idea for no longer than a second or two, though, because he _hated_ fire. Fuck all if he was going to start one to get rid of that shit. If the fire was larger than a match, then he wasn’t getting anywhere near it, so that ruled out burning it.

 

As Sandor began to think about it further, he realized that all of his misgivings were just absurd notions pushed into his head by a guilty conscience. It was a ridiculous idea to think that dirty money would somehow bring about bad luck. Sandor had lived off of a supplement of that sort of money for most of his life, and nothing bad had ever happened to him. Well, unless he counted his own stupid fuck ups, but he didn’t count those. Sandor couldn’t blame his poor life choices on money earned through improper means. He had to believe in some sort of self-responsibility if he expected to be a better person than what he was used to be, and that meant not trying to deflect the blame from himself and onto something or someone else.

 

After all, if anyone lived off of dirty money and lived well, it was Renly. Renly had it all. The man had two or three penthouses in the city, or did he have one penthouse and two houses on the riviera? Sandor couldn’t remember the details, but Renly lived well off for someone in his line of work and never seemed to have any problems from it. Renly owned land, real estate, and his own business, and there was no telling how many more things Renly had in his back pocket. Sandor had lived in this apartment ever since he cleaned his life up, but he was starting to wonder if he should have moved on to something else by now.

 

Snatching up the duffle bag once more, Sandor went to put it away somewhere safe and hidden before he left his apartment again. He went back down to his car parked on the curb, hopped in, and started to drive with the windows rolled down. Where he was going, Sandor had no idea. He drove until the street signs didn’t look familiar to him anymore, but the air was filled with the scent of salt. The trees seemed thicker out this way, and yet somehow they were also shorter. Sandor kept the car at a steady but slow pace down the street, passing into a residential area that he had never been to before. He didn’t know anyone out this way, and he never had any business take him out into this district of Kingsland in the past. The scenery was picturesque, though, and the sky seemed bluer and the greens appeared more vibrant.

 

Eventually, a good bit of the foliage gave way to open land, but most of the properties were surrounded by strategically placed hedges, trees, and flower bushes as if to fence them in with privacy. On top of that, the majority of them all had massive gates locking them in tight. Sandor wondered who would want to live in a place like that. The large gates made them look like prisons rather than homes, though perhaps people that wealthy were afraid of thieves and burglars breaking in and stealing all of their precious valuables. Sandor snorted at the thought as it crossed his mind. He kept driving, though. What he was looking for, he wasn’t sure, but he figured once he saw it, he would recognize it.

 

He found it after about thirty minutes of aimless driving. It was located far away from all of the posh manors, towering gates, and ridiculous amounts of hedges. There was a red and white ‘For Sale’ sign out front, and it was closer to the shore than any of the other houses he had passed on the way here. In fact, it had a perfect view, and it wasn’t too big. It was sort of small, but it had two stories and nice, open land surrounding it. Sandor pulled up to the driveway and parked his car behind one that was already in the driveway. He wasn’t sure if someone was here or not to give a tour of the place or if it was just another onlooker, but even if no one was here to show him around the place, he could still have a look real quick all by himself.

 

Maybe Renly’s talk had gotten to him, or maybe Sandor was just bored enough to go out and see what was available for the hell of it, but here he was outside of a beachfront property that, despite its reasonable size, probably cost a fortune because of its location alone. Sandor walked up to the house, looking upward to take in it all as he slowed his approach, when the front door opened up and a woman stepped out of it. When Sandor glanced down again, he paused in the middle of his steps.

 

“Can I help you?” the lady asked, and Sandor noticed she was a woman close to his own age. She had pale blonde hair that was pinned up on her head, and she wore a powder blue skirt suit.

 

“Yeah,” Sandor told her, and he nodded his head towards the house. “Can I see the inside?”

 

The woman tensed up, though, and Sandor realized immediately that she didn’t trust him and she was judging him. She took one quick look at his face, saw his scarring, and then her eyes flitted down to his casual choice of clothes. He didn’t look like her usual clients, and his size alone probably frightened her.

 

“Give me just a moment,” she said politely, giving him a forced smile. “Let me call one of my colleagues.” She edged herself back into the house, closing the door behind her.

 

Sandor almost went back to his car. First things first, he didn’t need this bullshit. He wasn’t going to clock her over the head, rob the house, assault her, or kill her. One look at him, and she ran like scared little cat. He waited there, though, arms crossed until another car pulled up, and Sandor turned around to look at the new arrival. It was another real estate agent, but this one was a man in a black suit, and he beamed brightly at Sandor as he got out of his car. The man extended his hand out as he approached Sandor, and Sandor accepted his handshake.

 

“Hello,” the man greeted warmly. “Are you interested in buying a house today?”

 

“I’m interested in looking around,” Sandor said, somewhat irritated. “Haven’t decided if I’m buying yet.”

 

“Well, let us show you around,” the man said, and he introduced himself, though Sandor hardly paid any attention to the information the man was rattling off at him. Sandor wasn’t interested in making friends. He was just here to look around and satisfy his curiosity. When he turned back to the house, the woman was standing in the doorway again, hands folded in front of herself and beaming, too. All of her anxiety was gone with the presence of her colleague. If the chipper fuck in the black suit made her feel safer, then whatever, Sandor thought.

 

The man led him into the house, and the woman trailed behind Sandor. Both of them were talking about the area and how calm and pleasant and peaceful the place was with its location and people, but Sandor was looking around to take in everything around him. The first living area was wide and brightly lit with many windows, and its walls were painted a soft sea foam green waist up with white paneling on the bottom. The carpet was a muted shade of green much darker than the walls, but it still somehow matched them. The foyer opened up into a wide hallway, and to the right was the main living room. It was huge with darker green walls and white paneling.

 

When they went down the hallway, the whole thing was lit up because of the floor length windows in the room at the very end. Before they reached the end, though, there were two rooms and a bathroom to the left. One of them looked like a plain bedroom, and the other had dark wooden walls that gave it the appearance of a study. On the right side of the hallway, there was a staircase leading up to the second story. The man and woman walked him further into the house towards the end of the hall, though, revealing the bright room to be the dining room. It was beige instead of white with a wall of floor length windows to give a view of the beach beyond it. Connected to the dining room was the kitchen, which didn’t look any different from the dining room.

 

They led him upstairs after that, and the staircase opened into a slightly rounded inside balcony on the second floor. It stretched out both ways, giving a view of the hallway below over a set of black rails. There were rooms to either side. Sandor turned around to face the other way, though, which would have been over the dining room, he realized. There was a round balcony beyond another set of floor length windows, filling up the upper hall with light as well. Despite not being much of a beach person, Sandor had to admit it was a nice place. The agents were rambling on about something to do with the house as Sandor inspected the rooms and they followed him. The master bedroom was huge with teal walls and dark carpet that felt perfect given the location of the property.

 

“It’s the perfect place to start a family,” the woman said cheerfully, and Sandor was torn out of his reverie of aimless gazing to look at her.

 

“I’m not starting a family,” Sandor said, trying not to sound annoyed with her, but he couldn’t really help it.

 

“If it’s open space you’re looking for,” the man filled in with a smile, turning over his hands as if to indicate the house, “then this is the spot.”

 

Sandor glanced over to his left. There was yet another set of balcony doors in the bedroom, though he wondered if it just led the same balcony as the one in the hall above the staircase, stretching across the house and connected by two doors in separate rooms. Again, he started to wonder why the hell he was here, looking at this property to begin with. Was he finally tired of living in an apartment, and if so, why didn’t he just go look at normal houses out on a street in the city instead of some posh beachfront property on the edge of it? Sandor wasn’t sure what brought him here, why he was looking, or what it all fucking meant, if it meant anything at all. He sighed deeply, feeling aggravated at himself for coming here in the first place. He should put the money away, store it somewhere for a rainy day, and never look at it again unless he absolutely had to.

 

With this in mind, Sandor thanked them curtly for their time and turned around to leave. He barely made it to the top of the staircase when his shoe caught on something and almost made him lose his balance. Thankfully, he wasn’t standing right in front of the staircase, and he was able to grab a hold of the railing to steady himself. Sandor glanced down and bent over to check whatever it was that had nearly caused him to fall. Grabbing it and turning it over in his hand, it looked like a pin or a brooch of some sort made out of silver wire. The shape reminded him oddly of a nest. Sandor scowled at it and threw it aside, moving to step forward again as he looked up, and something else caught his eye and caused him to stop yet again.

 

Outside on the balcony, hanging from three white chains, was an empty birdcage swaying in the breeze. Sandor wasn’t sure what it was about a birdcage that caused him to stop and take note of it, but he also noticed the little hinged door on it was unlatched and hanging open. He must have been staring for a good long moment because the man and woman had joined him by his side again, and the man’s pleasant voice cut through the heavy silence to interrupt the train of nothingness in Sandor’s head.

 

“Property like this doesn’t stay open for long,” the man informed him, trying to tie Sandor to a deal with a little bit of urgency. “Once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.”

 

“It would be such a shame to pass up a place like this,” the woman added with a wistful sigh. “If I could live here, I would buy it in a heartbeat.”

 

Outside in the breeze upon the balcony, the empty birdcage swayed back and forth, caught in the wind, and twirled slowly towards Sandor.

 

“I’ll take it,” he said.

 

Sandor didn’t know where the words came from, only that they came to him. As he was leaving the house later on to return to his car, he got an idea in his head to walk for a while around the area and see what it was like beyond the real estate property. The ocean breeze grew strong, turning into a sharp wind, and Sandor zipped up his jacket and then stuffed his hands inside of his pockets. A sight on the beach stole the attention of his gaze, and Sandor paused long enough to squint in order to try to make out the figure ahead of him. It was a man dressed in an over-sized white button up shirt and swim trunks despite the growing chill in the weather, his loose black hair whipping in the wind. When the man turned around, Sandor recognized him despite the sunglasses on the guy’s face.

 

Oberyn Martell grinned at the sight of Sandor, recognizing him as well, and he trudged up sand towards Sandor. Oberyn held a straw hat in one hand, and the silver watch on his wrist gleamed brightly as it caught the reflection of the sun’s rays.

 

“What are you doing out here?” Sandor asked him, and Oberyn laughed at his question.

 

“I live out here,” Oberyn replied, still grinning. “What are _you_ doing here?”

 

“Looking around,” Sandor said. He paused for a moment before he asked, “You live out here?” Never mind the fact that Oberyn had just answered that question three seconds ago. For some reason, Sandor couldn’t stop himself from asking it.

 

Oberyn laughed yet again, a vibrant and cheerful sound. “Of course,” he said, and he waved both of his arms outward to indicate their surroundings as he turned his head to look around as well. “Look at it. It’s beautiful.”

 

“This isn’t swimming weather,” Sandor told him, taking in Oberyn’s way of dress for today. It was a complete change of topic, but Oberyn didn’t seem to mind. The other man just shrugged his shoulders.

 

“I’m not swimming,” he said, amused. “I’m walking. Do I look wet?” Oberyn glanced down at himself, holding out his arms as if trying to inspect himself properly and looking for wet spots.

 

Sandor supposed he had a point there. “No, I guess not.”

 

“See? There,” Oberyn offered, smirking as he lowered his arms back to his sides.

 

Sandor glanced out towards the water. It was high tide, and the waves were rolling upward as tall as a person before crashing down against the sand with splashes of foam. It looked cloudy on the horizon as if a storm was on the way. Sandor didn’t want to get caught up in a storm, so he wasn’t going to stay much longer. He turned back to Oberyn.

 

“Why here?” Sandor asked him. “Why pick a beachfront property and not an apartment in the city?”

 

Oberyn made a scoffing noise at the suggestion. “Why waste your life looking at walls when you can look at a sunset over the water? Or the waves crashing along the shore? Life should be for beauty. Beautiful women, beautiful men, beautiful sunsets, and a beautiful life.”

 

Sandor huffed quietly at that. “If all men were so lucky.”

 

“They’re not,” Oberyn said, “but even a man of the slums can walk over to the beach and enjoy the sunset. The only difference between him and me is he doesn’t bother to make the trip, even though it’s free.”

 

It felt like there was something more being said than what Oberyn was actually saying, but Sandor didn’t have time to piece it all together just then. Oberyn reached over and patted Sandor once on the shoulder, giving him another one of his sly smiles.

 

“Take care of yourself,” Oberyn advised him, “and enjoy the beauty.”

 

Oberyn nodded his head in a farewell, and Sandor returned the gesture before the other man walked off. Sandor watched as he left until the wind whipped throughout the sky even stronger, bringing Sandor’s focus back to the shoreline. The clouds had grown darker during their short conversation, bruising the sky with a deep purple hue. It felt like something dangerous and powerful, rolling towards him from the ocean.

 

Something was coming, and it wasn’t a thunderstorm.

 

 


	64. Define Your Meaning of War

_* * *_

 

“Someone is here to see you, Lannister,” a voice called out from beyond the cell, and Jaime lifted his head to see who was there.

 

Beyond the bars of his jail cell, Brienne stood there with one of the guards in her full uniform. She seemed to wear no expression on her face but a blank slate as the guard unlocked his cell door, and Jaime scrambled up from the rickety cot to get to his feet in time for the door to be pulled open. Brienne walked in like she was reporting for duty, though, and the guard slid the cell door shut again. As the man walked away from them, Jaime stared back at Brienne as she stared at him. He was afraid to make a move because she had made no move yet either, and Jaime wondered if something was truly wrong or if it was all an act for the benefit of the department.

 

When the footsteps faded away, Brienne’s face finally cracked under the pressure of trying to look impassive, and the sudden spill of emotion through her mask caused Jaime to rush towards her. He threw his arms around her shoulders and neck as he pulled her into a close hug against his chest, his nails digging into her skin through her uniform as he gripped her tight. Brienne’s arms needed no moment of hesitation to answer his embrace, wrapping around him soundly and desperately as if she had not seen him in a million years and this was only his ghost before her. Jaime knew straight away that her game face had been for the department. He couldn’t imagine the whispered rumors or the jeers she must have been facing right now with him in the position he was in, sitting in a jail cell, a disgrace to the very agency he had served for years.

 

Brienne had known, though. She had known of his crimes all along because she had tailed him and tracked his movements before they had ever gotten together, and Brienne had been smart enough to discover some of the things he was up to behind everyone’s back. She had threatened to turn him in for his crimes, and she had almost done it, too. Before Brienne had a chance to turn him in, though, she was captured by Ramsay Bolton. Jaime had rescued her, and ever since that moment, things had changed between them. Brienne had never reported his underhanded actions, and Jaime had slowly backed away from that life. At the time, some part of him had recognized her respect, and he had wanted to keep it. Jaime had known if he kept up what he was doing that Brienne’s respect for him would be gone all over again, and so he had started to change. It was a long and slow process, but Brienne had recognized it in him as well, and through that, they had forged some semblance of a friendship between themselves. It wasn’t until later that their relationship became something more than just friends.

 

Now, they lived together. They had been seeing each other for over a year. Their relationship was still new to a degree, but it had seen rocky times even in the beginning. Jaime’s uncanny ability to be appallingly honest resulted in him admitting things to her than any sane person would have kept silent on and taken to their grave, and Brienne had not handled his truths very well. However, when he had explained to her how he had wanted no secrets between them, thinking secrets to be the death of any good thing, Brienne had slowly started to come around to him. It had taken her some time at first before she would allow Jaime to touch her again or even to kiss her, finding herself disgusted with what he had admitted to her, but Brienne had never given up on him. She could have, in all honesty. It was a horrifying truth he had divulged to her, and she had refused to speak to him for weeks over it.

 

Somehow, though, Jaime had never been willing to give up on her, and when he hadn’t given up, neither had Brienne. It had brought them here to this moment, standing in a jail cell with one of them caged and the other one free. Only while Brienne was free physically unlike Jaime, she was caged up on the inside, having to hide her true feelings on the matter regarding Jaime or risk losing her entire career over it. She braved it better than he would have, Jaime thought, as he finally pulled away from her to look Brienne in the face. They were both strong souls, but if anything were to be measured between them, Brienne was a lot stronger than Jaime. She had an iron will of adamant and the patience to back it up. Jaime had always admired that about her, even if at first he had mocked it.

 

Brienne pulled away from Jaime to put some distance between them before someone came by and saw them locked in an embrace. She straightened out her uniform and moved to sit down on the foot of the bed. Jaime, too, took a seat, but for the sake of appearances, he left some space between them. If Brienne was trying to lie to their colleagues to make her daily job just a little bit easier, then Jaime would let her have the lie. She deserved whatever peace it gave her at the end of the day. He certainly could give her none right now.

 

Brienne took a deep breath, her chest rising and falling with the motion. She turned her eyes to him, giving him a questioning look across the bed.

 

“What is going to happen to you?” she asked him, and Jaime could not help but admire the steady strength of her voice.

 

“I need your advice, Brienne,” Jaime said, knowing that he couldn’t full well tell her what was going to happen to him until he made a decision on what to do. He had been warring within himself for days, unable to decide if he should take the fall for his father and uncles and thus cause Myrcella, Tommen, and Joffrey to take a fall as well or if he should protect the children by turning over his father, Kevan, and Tygett to whoever wanted their heads on a pike. Due to the recent scandal of Jaime’s arrest and the rumors floating about because of it, Jaime had already heard news of his father dropping out of the race for Prime Minister. Jaime had expected as much to happen. If Tywin hadn’t dropped out, he would have lost the race regardless due to the scandal, and then he would have lost all of the money he had put into his campaign.

 

So far, though, nothing else had happened. Tywin still held his seat of power. Both of his uncles still held theirs. The children were still safe, though for how long Jaime couldn’t be certain, and Jaime was still sitting in a jail cell because he hadn’t given his lawyer or the district attorney a definitive answer yet. However, what happened next all depended on one person.

 

It all depended on Brienne.

 

Jaime didn’t mean to put the weight of the decision onto her. It hadn’t been his intention to do that when he thought to seek out her advice, but Brienne had been Jaime’s conscience for some time, and he depended on her more than he knew. His initial instinct had been to find a way to consult her on the matter, but he hadn’t been able to speak to her about it until now. Jaime had vowed that until he could talk to her, he would not give them an answer either way.

 

“My advice on what?” she asked calmly.

 

“I can get out of here,” Jaime explained to her, “and return to what qualifies as a normal life for me now if I do one thing. Turn over my father and my uncles, Kevan and Tygett. They want me to give them information to bring the three of them down.” Jaime paused, feeling his throat go dry. “Or they have blackmail information on the children, Myrcella, Tommen, and Joffrey. If I don’t do as they ask, they’ll release the information on their blood work and parentage to get back at me and ruin those kids’ lives.”

 

Brienne sucked in a sharp breath and looked away from him, casting her gaze to the floor. He could only imagine what must be going through her head. Her reaction to Myrcella, Tommen, and Joffrey’s parentage had been initially disgust, disbelief, and horror. At first, she had thought it was a horrible joke and told him it wasn’t funny. When he had continued to insist, she had kept telling him to drop the act. Eventually, the disbelief had turned into horror and disgust, and Brienne had shoved at Jaime to get him away from her. She had stormed out, leaving him, and he had tried to get a hold of her for weeks without an answer. It had come to a point where they had been allowed to talk about it, but Brienne had needed time to process and deal with the information he had forced upon her, and it hadn’t been easy for her.

 

The difference between Brienne and the public was Brienne had already loved him at the time, and maybe through some grace of that love, she had managed to forgive him for it. If the news became public knowledge, Jaime knew what type of backlash awaited it. It was a damn miracle Brienne had even come to forgive him for it. Jaime didn’t expect the same thing from anybody else, especially not from the world.

 

“You want my advice on which one to choose,” Brienne said slowly, still looking down at the floor.

 

“Yes,” Jaime admitted. “I don’t know what to do, and you would make the better decision, anyway. So, I leave it in your hands.”

 

“What if I told you to rot in prison?” Brienne asked, gazing back at him. Her eyes were pained as she spoke, and Jaime wondered if that was her final decision or if she was just testing him. He couldn’t even tell the difference.

 

“Then,” Jaime said slowly, hesitant but sincere, “I would rot in prison.”

 

“You would rot in prison because I told you to?”

 

“Yes,” Jaime answered her, “I would.”

 

Brienne looked taken aback by his answer, an obvious expression of surprise on her face. She stared at him for the longest time without saying anything back before she took another deep breath and looked away from him again.

 

“I think the answer depends on one thing,” Brienne told him. “If your father was in your shoes, and he was given the same choice as you have been given, what would he do for his son? Would he let you take the fall to save his own skin, or would he take the fall for you to give you a future?”

 

Jaime knew the answer to that before she had even finished. His father would do nothing to save him if it meant one of them had to go down. Tywin would pick himself over Jaime as the survivor, and he wouldn’t rot in prison for his son. He would fight for Jaime. He would lie for Jaime. He would swindle, cheat, and maybe even start a war for Jaime, but he would never exchange places in prison with Jaime. Tywin would let his own son take the fall, and Jaime knew it with every fiber of his being.

 

“He would let me take the fall,” Jaime said quietly.

 

“Then, there’s your answer,” Brienne said, and Jaime raised his eyes to meet hers across the bed. There was a firmness and certainty in her gaze that hadn’t been there a moment ago. “You know me, Jaime. You know who I am. I don’t condone things that are wrong. I don’t suggest things that are against my morals and my values. I won’t compromise myself, and you know that, but Tywin has a hold over you. He’s always had a hold over you, and he’s expected you for your whole life to do as he says, twisting your morals and beliefs to the point that you had forgotten you even had them anymore because of him. If all of this had been your fault, truly your fault, Jaime, I would say it’s within your duty to take responsibility for your actions, but this isn’t all on you. It’s a lot bigger than that, Jaime. It’s much bigger than that, and it always has been. You see that, don’t you?”

 

She was right, of course. It was much bigger than Jaime alone, and his part in the matter had been doing often what was expected of him. Brienne wasn’t the type of person to advise someone to turn in their own father, so the words coming from her meant more than they would have meant coming out of someone else’s mouth. Jaime knew she was being honest with him, but it didn’t make it any easier to hear her repeating the very thoughts he had been considering every since Randyll Tarly had shown him those files.

 

“I do,” Jaime admitted with barely a whisper, his eyes cast upon the floor where hers had been earlier, “but what happens when I turn my father in?” He looked up at her, then. “What happens when I turn Tywin over? My uncles over? What happens to me, then? I already have no sense of honor in the eyes of everyone else. I’ll be seen as a betrayer and a backstabber.”

 

Brienne’s expression was strong and yet pained at the same time. “You already are,” Brienne said in a trembling voice. “They already see you that way for what you’ve done, and you can’t change it now, Jaime. Taking the fall for your father won’t stop it. It won’t erase it. It’ll still be there when all is said and done.”

 

“If I take the fall for my father, I won’t have to deal with it,” Jaime replied in an almost snide manner. “I’ll be in prison, not the real world.”

 

“But the children will have to deal with it,” Brienne whispered to him. “They’ll have to deal with it for everyday for the rest of their lives because you didn’t have the balls to face it yourself.”

 

She had him there. Jaime couldn’t find a way to argue against that.

 

“What about my father?” Jaime asked, casting his gaze to the wall. It was the last question he had for Brienne. After this one, he had no more.

 

“What about him?”

 

“If I turn him over, what will he do?”

 

Silence met his question, and it pervaded the cell with an uncomfortable and ill-omened air. If he did turn his father over to them, there was every possibility that his father might seek retribution for the action, even against his own son. Tywin was a cunning man, too. It wouldn’t take much for him to dig to the bottom of whatever had started this mess in the first place, and then what would happen to those who had sought to bring him down? Tywin wasn’t known for his wrath, but he was known for his vengeance. One did not strike at a Lannister without being struck back, especially if that Lannister was Tywin Lannister.

 

“I don’t know,” Brienne whispered back, and Jaime took in a deep and shaky breath, knowing her answer was exactly the answer he had feared to hear from her lips. Not knowing was the hard part, no matter what he told himself. Jaime could entertain a million possibilities in his head, but there was no telling what the final outcome would be if it involved his father. Tywin was both predictable and unpredictable. Jaime knew what Tywin might do, but what he didn’t know was to what extent Tywin would do it.

 

“So much can go wrong,” Jaime told her, “and it can all fall on me.”

 

“It already has fallen, Jaime,” Brienne said, reaching out across the bed with her hand towards him. Jaime reached out as well, clasping his hand with hers in a firm grip while no one was looking at them. “It’s fallen, and it’s fallen on you, and now you must make a decision. Not only for yourself, but for Myrcella, Tommen, and Joffrey.”

 

“That’s not an easy decision.”

 

“It was never meant to be,” Brienne told him, shaking her head. “Life isn’t always about easy decisions, Jaime. Sometimes it’s about really hard ones that you have to make even when you don’t want to. I’ve made some hard decisions, and I’ve made some hard decisions with you because I love you. Well, guess what? You’ve got to make a hard decision for those children because I know you love them, too.”

 

“Am I doing this for them or for me, though?” Jaime inquired, wondering why he was asking Brienne such a question. She couldn’t read his mind to know his final choice of why he was doing it, but he supposed he needed to hear it from her to know that this was the right decision to make in the end.

 

“For both,” Brienne said, and she clutched his hand tighter within her own. “This isn’t just about them, but it isn’t just about you either. Like I said, Jaime, it’s much bigger than you.”

 

Jaime sat in silence as he mulled over her words. He knew, then, without having to think much further what his final decision would be. Jaime knew what he had to do, but that didn’t make it any easier to do it. Still, he had to face it sooner or later. He couldn’t sit here in a jail cell and put it off. If he didn’t give them an answer, they would go forward with prosecuting him. At some point as well, those files would be released to the public. If Jaime was lucky, he would survive in prison, but Lannisters weren’t made for prison cells, and Jaime didn’t know how long he would last inside of one.

 

Jaime clutched Brienne’s hand tighter in a response to her words, and he felt her fingers return his grip atop the rickety mattress of the jail cell cot.

 

He had to give them an answer, and he had to give them an answer now.

 

 


	65. Through So Many Splintered Trees

_* * *_

 

The lights were turned off within his living room, the television humming low in the background. The glow from its screen provided the only source of light in the room aside from the faint twilight outside of his apartment windows. Sandor turned his head to look over at Sansa, who had fallen asleep during the movie on his couch. Her head was laid upon the armrest, a large stuffed pillow tucked up underneath her between her body and the corner of the couch to give her some support. Her auburn hair spilled out over the armrest around her, and Sandor could make out the shallow breathing of her chest moving up and down beneath her bundle of clothing. She had come over dressed up warm in loose sweatpants, a t-shirt, a light sweater, and a coat. Her coat was currently thrown over the back of the couch, but she still wore her sweater. Her shoes had been kicked off ages ago, lying upon the floor not far from the couch.

 

It had been almost two weeks since the night of Halloween at the college party, and while Sansa’s lip had healed up and the marks had gone away from her face, the bruise on her side was still there as an ugly reminder of what had happened to her. The blotchy mark, which had previously been a purple so dark it was nearly black, had turned into an almost normal color at the center with splotches of red and lighter purple bruising that reached outward in an uneven circle around the midpoint of the mark. Sansa had shown it to him multiple times as it began to heal, finding no discomfort in the act of lifting the side of her shirt to let him look at it. Obviously, it was just a bruise, but her willingness to share it had shown her trust in him, and that alone had meant quite a lot to Sandor.

 

After everything she had been through with Joffrey, Sansa knew she could lie on Sandor’s couch and fall asleep with no one else around but him and feel perfectly safe in doing so. Sandor let the television play on in the background, though he had turned down the sound after Sansa had drifted off into a nap, and wondered if she had just not been getting enough sleep lately. She had told him a few days ago about a nightmare she had had with Joffrey, Boros, and Meryn in it, which had awoken her suddenly in the middle of the night with fear. She had known it wasn’t real, but that didn’t change the realness of the emotions it had caused in her. Sansa had been unable to go back to sleep, the memory of the bad dream and the feelings she had experienced as a result of it keeping her awake for the rest of the night. Sandor was not surprised she was having nightmares because of the event from Halloween. It was normal to have bad dreams over things like that, and even Sandor had had some bad dreams in his day.

 

He rose from the couch to go into the kitchen and grab a glass of water to drink. Leaning against the counter, he looked out into his living room and gazed at Sansa’s sleeping figure on his sofa. Sandor wanted to let her sleep, but then she had come over to have a small inside date with him, not wanting to go out and face a lot of people, and now she was sleeping instead of spending any time with him. The idea made him huff with a small measure of amusement as he lifted his glass for another gulp of water. Sandor was anything but mad at her. If anything, he found it funny how she had come over for a date and then fell asleep on his couch. It would be something Sansa would do, he thought, finishing his glass of water and putting the empty cup onto the counter instead of placing it in the sink.

 

His feet walked him back to the couch, and Sandor sat down once more on the end opposite of Sansa’s. Her legs were stretched out across the couch over the middle of it, taking up a good bit of space. It looked like she had stretched out even more once he had gotten up for a glass of water. Carefully, so as not to wake Sansa, he put his hands under her legs and lifted them just enough to slide himself closer to her on the couch, and then he rested her legs on top of his lap. Sandor was sure Sansa wouldn’t mind when she woke up that her legs were in his lap, and he glanced over at her face as she slept on against the armrest. He stared at her for some time until he realized his hand was moving up and down on her calf. Sandor’s hand paused in its movements once he noticed this, and he looked down at his hand on her leg.

 

Sansa was wearing loose fitting sweatpants today instead of her usual jeans, not that Sandor really cared or even minded it. In fact, he liked it better. Jeans were tight and restrictive, while sweatpants were soft, loose, and easy to move. With one slow push of his hand upward along her calf, Sandor slid her sweatpants out of the way and exposed the smooth skin of her lower leg, shin and calf. Sandor would never touch her in certain ways while she slept without her permission, but he hardly saw the harm in touching her legs below the knee. Besides, it might wake her up and get her attention back onto him instead of her dreams.

 

At first, he only glided the tips of his fingers against her soft skin. He felt a small prick of hair here or there. Placing his palm against her leg, Sandor gently ran it upwards to her knee before he traced it back down to her ankle around the edge of her sock. He glanced over at Sansa, noticing her stir in her slumber. Sandor watched as she twisted over onto her back, stretching out as every muscle in her body went taut, and slowly, Sansa began to open her eyes. Beneath his hand, he could feel the sudden stiffness in her muscles as she stretched, and he gripped her leg for a brief moment. As Sansa blinked her gaze into focus, Sandor moved his hand up her shin to her knee, circled it underneath to the sensitive spot below her knee that caused Sansa to jump slightly, and slid his hand back down along her calf.

 

When he looked over to her face again, Sansa was staring at him with her mouth a little open and her eyes a little heavy. She raised her leg, bringing her knee to a point, and placed the flat of her foot atop his thigh. Sandor’s gaze cut to her leg, his hand still resting upon it. It was as if she was offering him the opportunity to do more. He thought about it for only a moment, and then Sandor gently took a hold of the leg of her sweatpants and rolled it further out of his way until her skin was exposed halfway up to her thigh. Leaning towards Sansa, Sandor wrapped his arm around her leg and underneath her knee, and he lowered his lips to her knee to kiss it. Carefully, he hoisted up her leg by the calf just high enough to allow him to comfortably kiss his way down her leg without having to bend over too much. Halfway down her shin, Sandor pulled off her sock and let it fall to the floor. Sansa didn’t complain.

 

His mouth kissed its way back up her inner leg all the way towards her knee with a deliberate slowness, and he glanced up to see the expression on her face. Sansa was watching him with darkening eyes, and she arched her back as he reached her knee again. Sandor felt her move as if parting her legs, though he doubted she even knew what she was instinctively doing in response to his kisses and touch. Sandor had pulled away from her briefly, but he lowered his mouth to the side of her knee again. He pressed his lips to her leg and parted them against it, flicking his tongue along her warm skin. Sansa moaned softly from her position on the couch, arching once more. Sandor enjoyed her response to him, so his slid his free hand up her other leg as he held this one, and he trailed his lips higher to her thigh. Sansa opened her legs further, another moan wracking her chest, and Sandor shifted without removing his mouth from her leg. He moved his body until he was leaning over her slightly between her legs, and he bit down gently on her thigh.

 

Sansa shuddered beneath him as she let out a soft sound of pleasure, and she reached out to touch his hair, running her fingers over his scalp. Sandor kissed her thigh before he flicked out his tongue along her skin to taste her, and his hands let go of her leg to reach up to the waistband of her sweatpants. He didn’t try to pull them down. Sandor rested between her legs now, though his head was more at level with her stomach, and he ran his hands just under the hem of her shirt along the hot flesh underneath it. His hands and fingers traced themselves along the waistband of her pants, and Sansa arched into the touch, so Sandor bent over her and kissed the flat of her stomach. He wanted to go beneath it. He could tell she was turned on by his actions, and he could only imagine how good she would taste elsewhere on her body.

 

The fingers on both of his hands hooked underneath her waistband and moved to pull it down, but his hand must have brushed against the large bruise on her waist by accident because Sansa cried out in pain and her legs seized up around him. When Sandor lifted his head to look at her, there were tears in her lashes. Her side was still very sensitive to touch that even the slightest graze could hurt her, and Sandor, realizing his thoughtless move, sighed at his idiocy and lowered his head to her stomach for just a moment before he raised it again and let go of her waistband. He crawled up further along her body, making sure not to put any of his weight on her. His eyes cut down to look at her side, but he couldn’t really see it from here. Her shirt and sweater were covering her, and only about two or three inches of skin was visible between her shirt, sweater, and pants. Sandor could see the discoloration of the bruise, though, and he frowned at himself for managing to graze it and hurt her.

 

Sandor turned his head to look down at her. His hand came up brush the side of her face, his thumb smoothing itself along her cheek. “Are you all right?” he asked her in quiet voice, and Sansa quickly nodded her head, but her lashes were still wet.

 

“It felt like you hit it,” Sansa said, and she grimaced against what must have been a sudden throbbing sensation of pain in her side.

 

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Sandor told her. He ought to have taken her to his bedroom. The couch, he realized, was too cramped and too small for both of them. For one of them, it was comfortable enough to stretch out, but definitely not for both of them at the same time.

 

“It’s all right,” she insisted, but then she tried to move. “Can I get up?”

 

Reluctantly, Sandor leaned back and moved away from her to give her enough space to comfortably sit upright again. As Sansa shifted up into a sitting position, her shirt and sweater fell down, and she carefully bent forward to roll down her pants leg. Sandor was sad to see the sight of her skin leave his vision, but there wasn’t much he could do about it now. He had fucked up his chance to go further with her the moment he had grabbed at her waistband too eagerly near her bruised side. Maybe he ought to just wait until she was completely healed before he tried making any more moves on her because otherwise nothing was going to go according to plan.

 

“How long have I been out?” Sansa asked him, turning her head to glance at him with a curious expression.

 

Sandor shrugged his shoulders. “Thirty minutes, maybe.”

 

“Oh, okay,” she said, and Sansa pulled her hair back by her hands to twist it into a ponytail holder from her wrist. Sandor stared at her neck, wanting to glide his fingers through her hair himself to pull it out of the way, place his lips upon her neck, and kiss her until she lay wanton and willing beneath him again. It was just a thought, though, and he wasn’t going to act on it again so soon. Sandor sighed quietly at himself. He ran his hand over his head to the back of his neck to scratch himself there before he lowered his hand again.

 

“Do you have any snacks?” Sansa asked next, and Sandor nodded his head as he got up from the couch to go to the kitchen and show her where some snacks were in his cupboards. Together, they made a plate of a few things, some potato chips and dip, some finger sandwiches Sansa had made and cut up, and some stray vegetables Sandor didn’t even know he had got added to the plate as something to dip as well. Luckily, they were still fresh, but he had no idea where they came from until he remembered how many times Sansa had gone grocery shopping with him. She had probably picked them out.

 

As Sansa took the snacks back into the living room, Sandor excused himself to the bathroom for a moment. He closed the door and looked up directly into the mirror, wondering how the hell Elder Brother could be right and wrong at the same time. Elder Brother had said Sandor wasn’t seeking out sex with the Sansa because it was just another high for him and he wasn’t trying to lose himself again, but that wasn’t entirely true. Sandor had tried a few times to go further, but something had always stopped it. Either it was Sansa and her insecurities and fears over it, or it was something stupid on his part like grazing her injured side and cutting the moment short.

 

Sandor wanted her. God, he wanted her, and he couldn’t stop thinking about it. It pervaded his thoughts almost every day at some time, even if it wasn’t until late at night when he lay down in his bed by himself to go to sleep. Sandor wanted her, but if the moment got lost like it did earlier, then he didn’t try to push it further. He gave Sansa her space, but it frustrated him. It was starting to agitate him. Sandor didn’t think the agitation was directed at Sansa. Certainly, he never took it out on her, but the feeling was there. Each time he had gotten riled up and had to will it away, it cropped up in the back of his mind. It set his nerves on edge and made him restless.

 

Leaning over his sink, Sandor turned on the faucet to run the cold water. He cupped his hands under the flow and bent down, splashing his face with it. The icy chill seemed to help clear his mind. His body had long since calmed itself. Sandor reached for a towel and pressed it to his face. When he pulled it away, he finally gazed at his bathroom counter to take in the changes to it.

 

Over the last two weeks ever since Sansa had spent the night at his apartment, she had thought it a good idea to bring some duplicates of her stuff over to his place in case she ever spent the night here again. Sansa had her own toothbrush sitting in the cup next to his, and she had a tube of face wash and some toiletries strewn across the top of Sandor’s bathroom counter. Inside of his shower, too, there was shampoo, conditioner, body wash, shaving gel, and a feminine razor. All of it belonged to Sansa. Curiosity had driven him to smell the items when she wasn’t there, and the shampoo and conditioner had the same sweet scent as her hair.

 

The presence of her things had started to bother him, though. Sandor wasn’t sure why the presence of Sansa’s personal items in his home bothered him. It wasn’t like she was moving in with him. She just wanted to bring them over in case she ever needed them again, which was a smart move considering how sometimes she came over late at night, anyway. Therefore, why did it bother him? Sandor tried to push the thoughts out of his head. Her things in his bathroom hadn’t been all that bad. The worst of it was probably when he had gone looking into his dresser drawers and found some of Sansa’s clothes that she had stashed into _his_ dresser without even telling him she was going to put them there, and it wasn’t just t-shirts and pants either. It was panties and bras, too. Sandor had admittedly freaked out a little bit at that. Then again, it was probably because he hadn’t even known that they were going to be there.

 

He was overreacting, though, wasn’t he? Her wanting to have some of her things over his place wasn’t such a big deal. There was nothing there, and he was making mountains out of molehills. Sansa had been over to his place enough at nighttime for it to make sense that she have some of her clothes and toiletries in his apartment, waiting for her in case she ever needed them. Sandor shook his head at his thoughts and left the bathroom, turning out the light as he walked into the hallway.

 

Sansa sat on the couch, eating off of the snack plate in her lap and watching the television. She turned her head to look at him and smiled at his approach. Sandor took a seat beside her, and then he grabbed some of the chips off of the plate, when she said, “Hey, I’ve been thinking about something.”

 

“Yeah?” Sandor asked, glancing at her. “What’s that?”

 

“About college,” Sansa said, waiting for his reaction.

 

Sandor was about to eat a chip, but his hand stopped halfway to his mouth and he dropped it back down to his lap. “What about college?”

 

“Well,” Sansa began, “I’m going to be going to one next year, and I’ve been thinking a local one would be best because my brothers have already tapped out my parents’ college funds, so there really isn’t much left. I’ve got to be more frugal than them, so I was thinking of attending the classes but staying at home with my parents to save costs. Unless I get a scholarship, there won’t be much money. I don’t even have my own _car_ yet,” she added with a little laugh.

 

Sandor thought briefly of the hidden funds in his apartment, but he pushed the thought away. “That’s a good idea,” he told her. “Attending somewhere local. There’s a lot of good schools around here, anyway. It’s not like you’d be sacrificing your education.”

 

Sansa smiled at him. “Right,” she agreed, “that’s what I was thinking.”

 

“Have you picked one yet?” Sandor asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

 

“Not yet,” Sansa said, “but I was looking at two in particular. One is an all girls’ school close to Blackcastle College, where Jon attends, and they have a really high rating and great programs and strong focus on studies. Then, there’s the community college—”

 

“You should pick the first one,” Sandor suggested, cutting her off.

 

Sansa narrowed her eyes at him, but her smile increased upon her lips. “You didn’t even let me finish,” she said.

 

“It’s an all girls’ school, which means it’s more exclusive,” Sandor told her. “A community college won’t be the same. The focus you want won’t be there.”

 

Sansa’s small smile turned into a wide grin. “You just want me to pick that one because it’s an all girls’ school. You don’t want me mingling . . . ” Sansa leaned close to him. “ . . . With young, cute college boys,” she whispered.

 

Given her close proximity, Sandor looked down at her lips. “That, too.”

 

“Are you jealous of the cute college boys?” Sansa asked him, and Sandor realized she must have put the snack plate aside because she was kneeling on the couch and drawing closer to him. Her hands were on his shirt, sliding against his chest.

 

“I’m not jealous of anything that’s cute,” Sandor murmured, still looking down at her lips.

 

“Really?” she asked breathlessly. “Because I like a little jealousy.”

 

“Do you?”

 

Sansa slowly nodded her head as she moved to straddle Sandor’s lap. He almost raised his hands to touch her sides until he remembered her bruised waist only a moment before he touched her. Sandor placed his hands on her thighs instead, and Sansa leaned in so close their lips touched without an actual kiss to seal them together.

 

“Yes,” she whispered against his mouth. “It’s sexy.”

 

Sandor slowly parted his mouth and closed his lips upon hers, and their tongues met halfway to each other in the warmth in between. Sansa moaned softly at the back of her throat, arching her back as she sat herself down fully upon his lap. It brought her weight down upon him, and then she rocked her hips, but Sandor broke the kiss and shook his head.

 

“No, Sansa,” he said, “I can’t do that. Not now.”

 

Her body froze, and she pulled back from him. Sansa’s hands rested upon his shoulders. “What do you mean?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. “Did I do something wrong?”

 

“No,” Sandor told her, shaking his head again. His hand came up to hold the side of her face, though he wasn’t looking her in the eyes. His gaze was cast downwards between them. “You haven’t done anything wrong. I just can’t do that right now.”

 

When he lifted his gaze to her eyes, Sansa didn’t look as though she understood, but she nodded her head and removed herself from his lap to sit beside him on the couch again. Suddenly, he had wished he told her otherwise. Sandor wanted it, and he didn’t want it. He wanted the sensations it would bring, but he didn’t want the unfulfilled ending that would inevitably come afterwards. The problem with explaining it was Sansa wouldn’t understand how it was different for him than it was for her. Hell, it was different for all men, too.

 

He didn’t want her to worry, so he leaned in close to Sansa even after she had pulled away, nuzzling into the crook of her neck before kissing her there. His hand held the other side of her neck, and Sansa tilted her head back to give him better access. Sandor’s lips moved slowly against the side of her throat, trailing kisses, and he flicked his tongue out from time to time to lick her. He also let his teeth graze along her skin, and she shivered from the gentle contact. Sansa’s taut muscles loosened beneath his touch, and she turned her body somewhat to lean back into his chest, welcoming his embrace from behind her.

 

Sandor pulled away from her neck, opening his eyes. He pressed the side of his cheek along with his nose to her hair, breathing in the scent of it. Suddenly, he was reminded of the birdcage on the property he had been looking at a little over a week ago. Something about the presence of the birdcage had seemed to prompt him into making a decision, though the deal on the house and the land hadn’t been finalized yet. Sandor had wanted to talk to Sansa about it first, though why he couldn’t say. If he wanted to buy a house, then he could buy a house. He didn’t have to ask Sansa for her permission, but some part of him had wanted her opinion all the same.

 

“I wanted to tell you something, too,” Sandor mentioned slowly, and that got Sansa’s attention. She furrowed her brow in a questioning manner and turned around on the couch to face him.

 

“What did you want to tell me?” she asked him, resting her hands upon his arms.

 

“I bought a house.”

 

It just came out of him. Sansa’s expression was taken aback, and she leaned away from him as her hands loosened their hold upon his arms. Her mouth fell open, and she looked lost like she didn’t know how to react to that. It wasn’t the reaction he was expecting. He thought maybe she would be excited and happy for him. Maybe she would want to see it immediately. Maybe she would glow and ask him what it looked like, how big it was, and where was it located, but she just stared at him like he had told her bad news.

 

“Why did you,” Sansa began, but she stumbled over her words. “Why did you buy a house?”

 

Sandor had to think about it for a moment, and he said the first thing that came to mind. “I just thought it was time I moved out of my apartment,” he said. “Why? Why do you sound like it’s a bad thing?”

 

Sansa’s eyes scanned his face. “Buying a house is big decision,” she told him softly. “That’s not something you just . . . rush into . . . ”

 

“I didn’t rush into it,” Sandor disagreed. “It’s not finalized yet. I haven’t paid for it, but don’t you want to see it first?”

 

Sansa completely removed her hands from his arms. “Why do I have to see it?” she asked, her voice so soft that Sandor barely heard it.

 

Sandor was getting agitated, but he tried really hard not to let it show. “Look, maybe you should see it first before you make a decision. Maybe you’ll like it, and you’ll want to keep it. If you don’t want it, then—”

 

Abruptly, Sansa stood up from the couch. She took two steps back. Her eyes stared down at him with a shaken expression within their blue depths. “What do you mean,” Sansa demanded too quickly to keep her voice steady, “if I don’t want it? I never asked for it. I never asked you to _buy_ me a house—”

 

“I didn’t say that,” Sandor said with a scowl on his face. “I didn’t buy you the house—”

 

“You just said ‘if you don’t want it,’” Sansa protested, but Sandor cut her off.

 

He got up abruptly from the couch as well, pointing his finger out at her as the scowl on his face deepened. “I didn’t fucking say that.”

 

“Yes, you _did_!”

 

Sandor couldn’t handle this right now. He immediately walked away from her and headed towards the kitchen counter, scooping up his keys off of it. When he turned around to face her, Sansa’s eyes were glued on his hand that held the keys, and she looked afraid as she wrapped her arms around herself and raised her eyes to meet his across the distance.

 

“Get your things,” Sandor said. “I’m taking you home.”

 

“Sandor—”

 

“Get your things,” he repeated slowly, not breaking eye contact with her. “I’m taking you home.”

 

Sansa lowered her gaze, though not out of anything akin to fear. She had a deeply contemplative look on her face, but she kept silent on whatever had caused it. Sandor watched as she turned around to grab what few things she had brought with her to his apartment. She slipped on her shoes and followed him to the door when he led the way. There was no more talk over it, no more argument. Sansa didn’t like to talk to him when he got a certain tone of voice with her, so Sandor imagined his brusque tone had brought about her silence, which was all right for now because he didn’t want to talk about it any further for the moment.

 

Dropping her off at her house, Sandor drove himself back to his apartment. He flicked on a light, turned off the television, and cleaned up whatever was out because of Sansa’s visit today. Sandor didn’t know where Sansa had gotten that notion from earlier. The thought crossed his mind as he was cleaning. He had said no such thing about the house being hers or him buying it for her. He had gotten the house with himself in mind. It was Renly’s fault he had been cruising the beachfront properties in the first place, but he had settled upon the idea when he had thought of how nice the place was to him.

 

Sandor dropped the snack plate as he was carrying it into the kitchen, and it smashed upon the hard tile floor into what looked like a hundred pieces. He swore out loud, stepping back from it. It took him a moment to remember where he had stored the broom last, and when he found it, he cleaned the mess up and threw the broken pieces of plate into the trash.

 

When he dumped the last of it into the garbage bin, that was when Sandor realized it.

 

The silence in his apartment.

 

Sandor thought it was the noise that he had hated about living here, but as he started to think about it now, he realized he liked the noise. It was the silence that he hated in the end, not the noise. Sandor couldn’t stand the silence of his apartment and the emptiness he sometimes felt when he was home alone inside of it.

 

Shaking the thoughts from his head, Sandor continued to clean up. There was nothing significant about his thoughts.

 

There was nothing significant about them at all.

 

 


	66. You are a China Shop, and I am a Bull

_* * *_

 

The roaring noise of a crowd from the television drew Sansa’s attention up from her bowl of cereal for the morning. She brought another spoonful to her mouth as she watched the crowd eagerly bustling around two figures as they emerged from the entrance of a tall grey building in the city. Her spoon paused an inch away from her lips, though, as she recognized one of the figures emerging from the building. It was Uncle Jaime. Sansa would know his face anywhere. He was being pulled along through the crowd by a shorter man with peppered brown hair and a black business suit.

 

Lights flashed as various cameras went off in the flurry of the crowd, and Jaime flinched at the brightness of the flashes. He raised his hand to shield his face from the cameras and their lights. The crowd followed them all the way down the steps, shoving at each other and hollering out questions at the men. The shorter man standing in front of Jaime halted suddenly within the crowd, and he looked forward at some of the cameras.

 

“ _My client is very tired_ ,” the man said. “ _He has had been through a lot. We will answer your questions later. If you will please excuse us—”_

 

The swarm of reporters and cameramen raised its voices all at once, upset that he had not chosen to answer any of their questions and instead had dismissed them so easily. The lawyer continued to push his way through the throng of bodies until he and Uncle Jaime reached a vehicle waiting for them on the curb. Sansa watched as they struggled to get Jaime inside of the vehicle while the zealous crowd closed in with their cameras, light flashing and reflecting off of the window’s shiny surface once the door was shut. Sansa saw the silhouette of Uncle Jaime within the car as he looked up at the window, though she couldn’t see the expression on his face.

 

“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” Arya asked from her bowl of cereal across the table. Sansa glanced over at her sister in time to see Arya lifting her eyebrows and pointing her spoon at the television set. “Seeing Officer Jaime like that,” Arya added calmly, a look of contemplation passing over her face.

 

Sansa gazed back at the television set. She couldn’t imagine what Uncle Jaime must have been going through right now. Despite what she heard on the news, Sansa knew Jaime wasn’t a bad person. He might have done some bad things, but she knew there was a difference between doing bad things and being a bad person. She had learned that lesson from Sandor, though her parents seemed to think the opposite of her when it came to the matter regarding Jaime. Ned wanted him and his family to have nothing to do with a disgraced ex-cop, and her mother echoed her father’s feelings. Sansa, however, hoped she could get a chance to talk to Uncle Jaime about it all. She wanted to hear the story from him, not from the reporters or the media.

 

Once she had finished her breakfast in silence, Sansa trudged the way up to her room. She heard footsteps on the staircase behind her, and when she stopped and turned around to look, she saw Arya hurrying up the steps to catch up with her. Arya halted on the steps a foot or two from Sansa, holding onto the railing and grinning like a fool at her sister.

 

Arya smacked Sansa on the arm and darted past her. “Race you to your room!” she called out, disappearing past the threshold of Sansa’s bedroom. Sansa rolled her eyes, and she didn’t race after her sister. She walked the rest of the way, closing the door to her bedroom shut once she was inside. Arya sat upon Sansa’s bed, legs folded in front of her, and she gave Sansa one of her looks across the room with her eyebrows raised high and her lips pursed together.

 

“What’s that for?” Sansa asked her, referring to the look on Arya’s face. Instead of going over to the bed where Arya had sat down, Sansa approached her vanity. She pulled out the chair, turning it to face her bed and taking a seat in it.

 

“You haven’t been talking much lately,” Arya observed, resting her elbow upon her knee and propping her chin up in the palm of her hand. “What happened between you and Sandor?”

 

Sansa hadn’t talked about the strange fight between her and Sandor because it had left an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach. From the fight, she had gathered that Sandor wanted something more of their relationship that she wasn’t ready to give. It seemed as though he wanted her to move into the new house with him, and Sansa was only just now thinking about college and trying to make plans for her future. She had hardly been thinking about moving into a house with Sandor amidst everything else going on in her life. Sansa had tried to talk to Sandor about it, but he had cut her off before she could say more than his name, and then he had refused to let the conversation to continue.

 

Maybe she would get a chance to talk to him later about it, but so far, Sansa had been alone with her thoughts for the last few days. She glanced up at her sister across the room. Arya still sat patiently upon Sansa’s bed, waiting for an answer from her. Sansa let out a sigh, looking up at the ceiling. A part of her was afraid of talking to Arya about it, but then she figured she really didn’t have anything to be afraid about when it came to her sister. Arya was good at keeping secrets. Her only fear was that Arya might be judgmental about it and say something rude concerning Sandor, which would only upset Sansa. She needed someone to talk to, though, while she couldn’t talk to Sandor about it, and Arya was the best person for the job. Sansa was closer to Arya than she was with anyone else in her life, and no one understood her like her sister.

 

Resolving herself to speak on the issue that had plaguing for her days, Sansa thought first of the most relevant thing to mention to Arya before she just delved into her argument with Sandor. The most relevant thing was the thing that had started the whole argument in the first place.

 

“Sandor bought a house,” she said, staring at Arya and waiting for a reaction.

 

Arya’s eyes lit up as a smile appeared on her face. “ _Good_ for him,” Arya replied cheerily. “Houses are nice. Better than apartments, anyway.”

 

Sansa was stunned by Arya’s reaction to the news. “But isn’t buying a house a big decision? One you have to think on before you do it?”

 

“How do you know he hasn’t thought on it?” Arya asked her, furrowing her brow.

 

“Because,” Sansa began, but she found herself pausing at the end of the word. As the reason popped into her head, it seemed like such a ridiculous reason. “He hasn’t talked to me about it,” she added softly, hating the way it sounded out loud.

 

Arya snorted. “Like he had to talk to you about buying a house,” she said. “It’s not like you’re married to each other, for god’s sake.”

 

“But I’m his girlfriend,” Sansa protested, regaining the strength in her voice. “He should have at least mentioned it to me before just springing it on me.”

 

“Precisely,” Arya shot back, “you’re his girlfriend. Not his wife. He didn’t _have_ to share it with you. He just wanted to share it with you. Besides, it’s just a house. Gendry has a house. What’s the big deal?”

 

Sansa hadn’t thought of it like that, but Arya was right. Gendry had a house, too, and he’d had it for a while now. If Gendry could have a house, then certainly it wasn’t a big deal if Sandor had a house. Sandor was a lot older than Gendry, anyway. He ought to have a house by now, so maybe it was time for Sandor to move out of his apartment and into something bigger. Sansa was just reading far too much into it.

 

“You’re right,” Sansa admitted in a quiet voice. “It’s just a house, but he said something, Arya. He said something funny that scared me. Like, not terrified me or anything, but scared me in the sense that it made me uncomfortable. Sandor asked me if I wanted to see it first, and when I asked him why did I have to see it, he got mad at me and said I should see it first before I made a decision about it.”

 

Arya narrowed her eyes. “He just bought a new place,” she enunciated slowly. “You’re his girlfriend, and you ask him _why_ do you have to see it?”

 

“What do you mean?” Sansa asked softly, fearing Arya’s meaning.

 

Arya sighed deeply, hanging her head for a moment. She raised it again, looking Sansa in the eyes. “You hurt his feelings, Sansa,” Arya told her. “When Gendry got his place, I went to see it. If I told Gendry I didn’t want to see his new place, how do you think that would have made him feel? To hear his own girlfriend basically say she didn’t want to see his new home? Guys are prideful people, Sansa. Trust me. I knock them down enough to _know_ this. You can’t just tell him you don’t want to see his new place, which he is obviously proud to have, and expect him not to get hurt over that when you’re his girlfriend. He was trying to share that with you, and you just shot him down.”

 

If Sansa expected to feel any worse over the situation, she felt it now. She hadn’t thought about it that way either. Sansa’s first instinct had been to assume that Sandor wanted her to move in with him, and now as she pondered over their argument in her head with Arya’s advice in the background of her mind, she realized her sister was probably right after all. Sandor had gotten really hurt when she said those things to him, and it never crossed her mind that maybe he was just trying to show off and she had wounded his pride because she misread his actions.

 

However, there was something else that Sandor had said to her. “There’s more,” Sansa ventured further, meeting her sister’s gaze again. “Sandor said if I liked it, then I would want to keep it. He said if I didn’t want it, then, well, he didn’t get to finish his sentence because I cut him off, but isn’t that weird?”

 

“Huh,” Arya said. “Yeah, that is kind of weird.” Arya scrunched up her face. “Was he, like, already mad at that point?”

 

“Sort of,” Sansa answered her.

 

“Well, then, maybe he was just flustered and he said the wrong thing,” Arya replied matter-of-factly. “Have you tried talking to him about it?”

 

“Not yet,” Sansa said, sighing. “I haven’t had a chance to.”

 

Arya shook her head. “He might have just been flustered,” she added. “I doubt he meant anything by it, Sansa. Sandor doesn’t seem like the type of guy to settle down so soon, but it’s something you ought to keep in mind if you’re going to continue dating him.”

 

“What do you mean?” Sansa asked, and she crossed her arms over her chest as she leaned back in her chair. For someone who was younger than her, Arya was a lot more perceptive than Sansa. Oftentimes, Arya picked up on things that flew right over Sansa’s head. It was frustrating sometimes, especially since Arya was her little sister and not her older sister, but it made Arya one of the best people to go to for advice whenever Sansa needed it. Arya was more logical where Sansa was more emotional, and the two of them complemented each other well despite that difference between them.

 

“Sandor is a lot older than you,” Arya pointed out, and she kept her tone firm and steady as she stared across the distance at Sansa. “He’s in his thirties. There might come a day when he starts thinking about settling down. He’ll think about family, marriage, and babies, and if you’re still with him, it’s going to be a strain on your relationship if you don’t want the same things. Even I know that, and I’m sixteen. You’re not even a year and a half older than me, Sansa. These are things you ought to think about if you’re going to date someone _that_ much older than you. Hell, you probably ought to talk to him about it, too, to find out where he stands on the matter. Otherwise, it might blow up in your face, and you know Mum and Dad will _flip_ if you get married and have babies young.”

 

“I don’t _want_ to get married and have babies young,” Sansa shot back, eyeing her sister with a sideways glance.

 

“Then, you better tell Sandor that,” Arya added with a chipper tone, “before he starts thinking about going out and buying you a ring.”

 

Suddenly, the pit of Sansa’s stomach twisted with an uncomfortable ache. The thought of Sandor going out and buying her a ring was enough to fill her with dread, but she didn’t like the feeling. Sansa had always dreamed of her wedding as a little girl. It was supposed to be a big flashy affair with the most beautiful wedding gown in the world with strings of pearls and lace. Ironically, she had always thought of light grey dress instead of a white one, but that was aside from the point. She had never imagined getting married so young, and she still couldn’t imagine it now. Sansa wanted to live her life first before settling down. She wanted to go to school. She wanted to pick a career. She wanted to _own_ her own car first, for heaven’s sake.

 

Most of all, Sansa wanted to be able to support herself. She had always thought of herself as a strong young lady, even if there were moments when others might not have judged her the same, but she had endured a lot and came out better for it all. Self-sufficiency was important to Sansa, so she would never have to rely on a man to make it in life. Sansa had learned these traits from her mother, Catelyn, who was the strongest woman she had ever known. It wasn’t something that Sansa liked to think about, but if something ever happened to their father, she knew their mother would continue on without having to remarry to support herself and her children. It wouldn’t be easy with kids in the picture, but Catelyn would make it because she was that type of person. Sansa aspired to be like her mother more than anyone else in the world.

 

Arya was right, though. It was something Sansa had to talk to Sandor about soon if she didn’t want any more misunderstandings between them. Sansa had never thought about discussing serious relationship things with Sandor, but she also realized it wasn’t something she could avoid. He was much older than her, and maybe Sandor had different notions in his head than she did when it came to relationships. If he expected something completely different from Sansa than what she expected of him, then it would only serve to throw a wrench into things later down the line. Since she was his first girlfriend, maybe that meant he took relationships a lot more seriously than her. Sansa had never considered it like that, but it made sense. Sandor had never messed with relationships before, and maybe it was because he held them to a much higher standard.

 

Sansa wanted it to work with Sandor, but it wouldn’t work if they didn’t talk about it. This silence between them wasn’t healthy, and she knew that. As soon as she got the chance, she would talk to him. Right now, she knew Sandor was asleep given the time of day, and later on tonight, he would be working. Today wasn’t a good day for talking to Sandor, but it was a good day to take her mind off of those matters for a little bit. Sansa was still young, and she still wanted to enjoy herself when it was possible. The more serious matters could wait, and she and Arya could spend a day together. Maybe even Gendry could come along with them.

 

Looking up at her sister with a smile on her face, Sansa was glad she had talked to Arya about her fight with Sandor. Arya had managed to shed some light on a few things that might not have occurred to Sansa otherwise. Sometimes Arya opened up Sansa’s eyes to a completely different perspective than what she had previously been thinking, and that was a good thing. Arya kept Sansa on her toes, and Sansa needed that in her life.

 

“You know, you’re too smart for your own good,” Sansa teased her sister, and Arya grinned back at her.

 

“I hear that all the time,” Arya said, hopping off of Sansa’s bed.

 

“Do you want to go somewhere today?” Sansa asked her, getting up from her chair as well. “We could go hang out.”

 

“Sure,” Arya told her happily. “How about we go get some real breakfast? I don’t feel like cooking, and I doubt you do either. Ooh, we can go to that fifties themed diner down on the corner of Long Sister and Little Sister.”

 

“Don’t they just call that area Three Sisters?” Sansa asked as she grabbed her coat and slipped it on, and Arya headed towards the door.

 

“Ugh,” Arya said, “they do, but I don’t.”

 

Sansa followed Arya down the stairs and out the front door, and the two of them headed for the sidewalk and began to walk in the general direction towards Gendry’s house. Sansa figured if they expected to get anywhere within a decent timeframe, they would have to go to Gendry’s and hitch a ride. Sansa didn’t have her own car, and Arya didn’t have her own car either, and they were not walking all the way to the corner of Long Sister and Little Sister. They chatted idly along the way, and when they got there, Arya had already texted Gendry beforehand to warn him of their arrival.

 

He was ready when they showed up, and the three of them all hopped into Gendry’s vehicle and took a shortcut to the diner in question. Gendry knew all of the streets in Kingsland like the back of his hand, and he could probably drive them all with his eyes shut and never get lost, not that Sansa ever hoped he attempted it. They arrived in less than fifteen minutes, managing to avoid the worst of the morning traffic thanks to Gendry’s handy skills on the road. After Gendry parked the car, they all piled out of his vehicle and walked up to enter the diner together.

 

It was cute and cozy little place with white walls and matching tiled floors. The counter was a red slab outlined with silver metal and lined with red cushioned stools from one end to the other. The walls of the diner were packed with red cushioned booths, and Gendry led the way to one of the empty ones down in the far back. He liked being away from the crowds, and Sansa didn’t mind. She doubted Arya much minded either. The three of them picked up the menus, ordered something to eat, and started to talk idly as they waited for their food.

 

They received their drinks first, and Sansa had ordered a strawberry milkshake. Despite the light bowl of cereal that morning, she was still hungry. Whenever Sansa became bothered by something, she noticed that she ate less than normal. Her appetite was returning to her, though, and her stomach was rumbling for more food. Hopefully, it would get here quick before her stomach ate itself with all of its growling. Gendry make a joke about it, and Sansa threw her napkins at his head. He still ducked, even though they were only napkins.

 

“You are _such_ a sissy,” Arya teased him, and Gendry looked offended by her claim.

 

“I am not!” he said. “I am anything _but_ a sissy.”

 

“Then,” Arya demanded, giving him a smug smile, “why did you duck when Sansa threw napkins at you?”

 

“Because you can get paper cuts from napkins,” Gendry quickly threw back at her. “Don’t ever tell me _you_ haven’t been cut by a napkin before. That shit hurts, for the record.”

 

“ _Sissy_ ,” Arya sang in a high-pitched voice, and Gendry punched her in the arm, so Arya punched him right back until he was cowering in the booth and begging her to stop hitting him.

 

Sansa was amused by their play fighting, but she turned away to look over the diner. There weren’t too many people there, and most of them were up at the counter instead of sitting out in the booths. The bell on the door rang as it was opened by a new patron, and Sansa turned her head to look. Her mouth fell open at the sight of Uncle Jaime walking into the diner with the lawyer from the news this morning. She never would have expected to see him in the same day as seeing him on the television, and the idea struck her to go talk to him while she had a chance to do it.

 

Sansa turned back to Gendry and Arya, who were still engaging in a punching fight with Arya practically on top of Gendry.

 

“Excuse me, you two,” she called over their play fighting, “I’ll be right back.”

 

Neither of them seemed to hear her, though, so Sansa just shook her head at their antics as she slid out of the booth and made her way over to Jaime and the lawyer. They were walking in the opposite direction as her, so Sansa followed them. Once they found an empty booth to their liking, the two men moved to sit down. Sansa stopped once she reached them, but neither of them were looking up in her direction to notice her.

 

“Hey, Uncle Jaime,” she called out, and her voice cracked on the last note.

 

Jaime froze in mid-movement of sitting down, and he slowly turned around to face her as he righted his body again. His lawyer friend glanced up from his seat, taking note of her, but Sansa wasn’t paying attention to him. Her eyes were on Jaime.

 

He looked absolutely horrible. There were dark bags under his eyes, and his skin looked paler than normal. Sansa didn’t think he had been in jail for that long, but he had grown out a beard since the last time she saw him. His hair was a mess, even though it looked like he had tried to comb it, but it wasn’t as if it had been very short before. Though his clothes consisted of a brand new suit and tie, his appearance beyond that made him look like a haggard beggar on the street. Sansa’s heart ached in her chest at the sight. She knew despite everything she had heard that Jaime was a good person underneath it all, and he didn’t deserve this.

 

“Sansa,” Jaime said quietly, looking surprised to see her. “What are you doing here?”

 

“Getting breakfast,” she told him. “What about you?”

 

“The same,” he answered, tilting his head a little.

 

“Do you have a moment to talk?”

 

Jaime had to think about it, but he turned to his lawyer friend and excused himself from his presence. In the past he had never been afraid to touch her by placing his hand on her shoulder or arm, but he kept his hands to himself and tucked them in his pockets as he followed Sansa to another empty booth in the diner. They were apart from the people, and it was quieter, too. The sunlight was bright through the windows, and Jaime squinted because of it, shielding his eyes like he hadn’t seen sunlight in years.

 

Sansa’s heart went out to him, and she reached across the table to touch his hand, squeezing it gently with her fingers. Jaime froze at the contact, glancing down at their hands and staring. He narrowed his eyes like he wasn’t certain why she was holding his hand, but Sansa didn’t mind his look one bit. She wanted him to know that at least someone still cared, and she wasn’t going to judge him as easily as the rest of the world.

 

“I know,” Sansa told him with strong conviction in her voice, “that despite the news, despite what they say, and despite why you were arrested, that you are a good person, Uncle Jaime, and I wanted to tell you that.”

 

Jaime raised his head as he drew in a sharp breath, but he did not raise his eyes to meet hers. They were locked on the tabletop, unwilling to look up.

 

“How do you know that I’m a good person, Sansa?” Jaime asked her, his voice quiet and raspy. It sounded hoarse as if he was getting sick.

 

“Because,” she said tenderly, “I feel it in my heart.”

 

Jaime’s face tightened again as if in deep thought, or as if some kind of pain had taken him over, and she felt it as his other hand clasped itself over hers. He held her hand back with a strong grip in his own, and Sansa glanced down to look at their hands upon the table. She placed her free hand on top of his until all of their hands were clasped together. There had been a few times when Sansa had wanted to go home and get away from Joffrey because he was scaring her, and Joffrey insisted that she stayed, but Uncle Jaime had thankfully been around at the time and he had escorted her home when Joffrey refused to take her. Uncle Jaime had even suggested to her a few times to break up with Joffrey if he was being a prick to her, but Sansa never did. She had never told Jaime what was really going on with Joffrey, and she had often wished that she had said something to him. Jaime would have put a stop to it sooner if only she had spoken up about it.

 

The past was the past, though. There was no changing it now. All they had was the present and the hope to not make more mistakes. Sansa was slowly learning this about life, and she wanted Uncle Jaime in her life. Perhaps he wasn’t her uncle by blood, but Jaime had always treated her like she was his niece and his family. To Sansa, that had been all that mattered. Not all family was blood, after all. Sometimes family was made and not born, and Jaime was a part of her family whether her father and mother still accepted him or not. Sansa would never cast him out.

 

She had always been told that she was too trusting of people, but Sansa didn’t believe that about herself. She had a compassionate soul, and she believed in giving people a chance. Often, she put herself in their shoes to understand what motivated them and why, and she knew whatever had driven Jaime to get arrested was not something entirely within his control. There were bad people in this world who could have a hold over others, puppeteers working their strings for a show, but Sansa would not be fooled by strings.

 

It took her a moment to realize there were tears falling down Jaime’s cheeks. He hunched forward over the table, trying to hide them from sight, but Sansa could see the quiet shake of his chest as he sobbed in silence. Jaime probably expected her to hate him. He probably expected everyone to hate him, but Sansa didn’t hate him.

 

She held his hands as he sobbed quietly, and the bright sunlight silhouetted their frames against the booth in the wide windows of the diner.

 

 


	67. Which is Sweeter, Love or Its Loss

_* * *_

 

“ _Mr. Bolton_ ,” the reporter on the television set shouted out from the crowd below the podium, “ _is it true that you are saying you are not the serial killer known as ‘the Skinner’ and that you were wrongly set up and framed by former Officer Jaime Lannister and Officer Brienne Tarth?_ ”

 

Sandor raised the cold bottle in his hand towards his lips to take a swig of the bitter liquid within it. His eyes watched the television screen with rapt interest, taking note of the way Ramsay Bolton’s cold eyes crinkled at the corners and yet no emotion shone through them. It looked like a dead giveaway to Sandor, but he wondered how many people in the crowd even noticed it.

 

Ramsay lifted his chin, gazing amongst the crowd, and answered the question. “ _Yes, is it true_ ,” he told them. “ _I have been wrongly framed for the murders committed by a sadistic serial killer who is still out there on the loose and capable of hurting others. I was framed, set up, by Officers Jaime Lannister and Brienne Tarth, and I have lost precious years of my life wrongly imprisoned because of them for crimes that I have not committed, and I cannot get those years back. I can, however, make sure that no other innocents must suffer as I have suffered_.” Ramsay’s cold dead eyes locked with one of the cameras in the crowd, looking straight through the television screen. “ _I will have my restitution_ ,” he said firmly, “ _and I will see to it that they pay for their crimes_.”

 

The crowd of reporters hollered out more questions, but Ramsay stepped away from the podium as his lawyer appeared in his place to dismiss any further questions. Sandor recognized the lawyer. He narrowed his eyes, leaning forward in his seat upon the couch as if it might help him get a better look at the guy. Sandor had seen that same man with Jaime Lannister the morning Lannister was released from jail after nearly a month of imprisonment, and he had seen him once before that as well. One night outside of his pub, Sandor had run into the guy as he was having a smoke. He was a short man with peppered brown hair and a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee. Sandor watched as the lawyer stepped away from the podium to join Ramsay, but the crowd kept hollering out questions at their retreating figures until the news channel reverted back to their own reporter to finish covering the story on Ramsay’s release from maximum security prison.

 

This was just the beginning of it, of course. Today, it was Ramsay. Tomorrow, it could be anyone. Jaime’s ill fortune was a favorable fortune for many he had put away. The more notorious ones could attract and afford a good lawyer to help them argue their cases, while the other less important criminals with smaller offenses under their belts might not be so lucky. It was always the worst ones who got away with it, Sandor reflected bitterly as the corner of his mouth twitched with the thought, and anyone could be next. His own brother could be next. Sandor watched the news day by day now as trepidation overtook every nerve in his body. He was waiting for it. If Ramsay could attract a good lawyer to help him fight his case against Jaime, then Gregor could do the same. It was only a matter of time.

 

Sandor leaned back against the cushions for a moment and quickly downed the rest of his bottle, rising from the couch after he had finished it off. He walked into the kitchen, held open the lid on the garbage can, and dropped the empty beer bottle inside of it. It clinked as it hit another empty beer bottle in the trash, and Sandor paused to wonder at how many he had had so far. Not that many, he dismissed, shaking his head at himself. Sandor turned back around and reached out for the door on the refrigerator to get something to eat when he heard a knock at his door.

 

He froze again, slowly turning around to look at the door to his apartment from his kitchen. He wasn’t so sure who could be there, but then he remembered his phone was connected to the charger in his bedroom, and he wondered just how many missed calls there might be on it. Instead of going to check his phone, Sandor went ahead and shut the refrigerator door to walk over to answer it. When he looked through the peephole, he saw Sansa standing there on the other side with her head turned a little to the left but her eyes on the door. She had an expectant look on her face, but she looked calm, not angry or upset.

 

Pulling away from the peephole, Sandor grasped the handle as he looked down at the floor. He wondered if he wanted to open it, and he realized he did, but he hadn’t talked to Sansa in what felt like almost a week. Between school and work and their fight over the house, the two of them had sent a few missed calls back and forth and yet hadn’t even talked since that day. His desire to see her outweighed his misgivings, though, and Sandor twisted the doorknob to open the door for her.

 

Sansa glanced up at him immediately, offering a small smile in his direction. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but he wasn’t expecting that. It eased the worst of his anxiety, though, and Sandor stepped away from the door to let her pass. Sansa took the invitation, walking into his apartment, and Sandor shut the door behind her, turning to watch her as she slowly stepped forward and glanced around his apartment as if she hadn’t been to his place in a long time. She acted as if she had forgotten how it looked. It had barely been a week. It wasn’t that long. Sansa turned on her heels to face him again, clasping her hands behind her back.

 

“Hey,” she finally said, and she smiled again, though he could tell it took a lot of effort on her behalf to do it.

 

“Hey,” he returned, and Sandor let his hand fall from the door handle back to his side. “What brings you by?”

 

“I tried calling,” Sansa told him, “but you didn’t answer.”

 

Sandor gestured towards his bedroom with his index finger. “It’s on the charger by my bed,” he informed her. “I haven’t looked at it.”

 

Sansa looked away, biting her lip, but she nodded her head at his answer like it was good enough for her. She glanced around his apartment again, and then she moved to sit down on his couch. Sandor figured he might as well join her, so he crossed the distance to sit down beside Sansa. When he raised his eyes to hers, Sansa was smiling at him again a little more easily this time with a sad but also happy look reflected in her eyes. It was confusing to Sandor because he didn’t know what it meant, but she pulled up her legs onto the couch and crossed them, rotating her body to face him. Her hand rested itself upon his knee, and Sandor glanced down at it. Despite Sansa’s reactions to the news about the house a week ago, she was reaching out to him now. It had to have meant something.

 

Without him even thinking about it, Sandor’s hand reached out to lay itself over hers. It had only been a week, but it had felt like much longer. He had missed her, plain and simple, and he was only just now realizing to what extent. Sandor had cut her off, refusing to let her talk to him any further, when they could have worked this out a week ago and not been left in uncertain silence over it. He had picked up drinking again while she was gone, and he didn’t know how, when, or why. It had just happened to him somehow, and Sandor couldn’t put tabs on the moment it began. He wasn’t acknowledging his slip up, though. Subconsciously, he was aware of it, but Sandor pushed it so far away from his waking mind that he wouldn’t admit to himself even if she noticed it and pushed the issue. He had had a beer bottle in his hands just moments ago before she had knocked on his door, but if she had seen it and confronted him about it, Sandor would have acted like nothing was going on and nothing was wrong.

 

Denial had been his friend for a long time back in the days when he couldn’t stay sober. Sandor spent his moments when he wasn’t working drowning himself in a bottle and trying to numb himself to the world. Some people could deal with their problems in a healthy manner, but until Elder Brother came along into Sandor’s life, he had never been taught healthy manners. He didn’t even know what a healthy manner was to be able to utilize it until he met Elder Brother. When it came to his problem with alcoholism, Sandor only knew how to consume something until it filled him up enough to expel everything bad from his mind. Of course, it only worked to an extent. Sometimes the alcohol even made it worse. It wasn’t a solution, after all. It was just a temporary fix, and Sandor had been putting patches on the leaking pipe for years without ever actually trying to replace the damn thing to fix it for good. He had been doing well these last two years and a half, though. At least, he had been doing well until now.

 

Sandor raised his eyes from their hands to Sansa’s face again, and he saw as her expression softened to a point that she appeared to be completely relaxed in his presence now. Whatever apprehension she had felt coming into his apartment was gone for the moment, and she tilted her head to the side almost like a puppy might do as she looked at him. Her eyes were wide and full of emotion, and Sandor felt her hand turn over underneath his to clasp him back with her fingers.

 

“I’ve missed you,” she said softly at last, breaking the silence between them.

 

He wanted to answer her back, repeating the words, but they stuck themselves to the back of his tongue. His mouth wouldn’t even open for them. Realizing his inability to speak, Sandor did the next best thing and reached out for her instead. His fingers grazed lightly along the bare skin of her collarbone with the softest touch, and then he slid his hand against the side of her neck to hold her there. Sansa leaned into his palm, and Sandor pulled her towards him. When their lips touched and he parted his mouth to hers, Sansa’s tongue reached out tentatively to meet his and she froze in place.

 

Slowly, she pulled away from him. Sandor felt the look of puzzlement crease his face, and Sansa’s brief look of shock filtered away behind a smile that revealed her teeth. The corners of her eyes wrinkled at her happiness, and Sandor forgot about the look of shock she bore just moments before it.

 

“Do you have anything to drink?” she asked him all of a sudden, and Sandor felt his eyebrows go up as he glanced over into his kitchen.

 

“Yeah, in the fridge,” he said, gesturing at it with his thumb. Sansa got up from the couch and went into his kitchen. Sandor waited for her to come back, and when she lingered at the refrigerator longer than necessary, he looked over his shoulder again to see what she was doing. He saw her back to him, and she was just holding it open and staring inside of it.

 

“Are you going to stay in there forever?” Sandor called out to her, and Sansa quickly grabbed something from within the refrigerator before closing the door and returning to the living room. When she slowly took her seat again, Sandor noticed what she was holding in her hands. It was a beer bottle from a case he had inside of the fridge.

 

It would have been one thing if she had just asked him about it, but Sansa was smart. She went to grab a piece of evidence first, so he couldn’t just outright deny it. Sansa twisted the cold beer bottle around in her hands, and she raised her eyes from her lap. Sandor lifted his gaze as well. The look on her face wasn’t accusing, though. It was worry as she fidgeted with the beer bottle in her lap.

 

“Sandor,” she began carefully, “is something wrong?”

 

Sandor twisted his body to lean against the back of the couch, and he let out a sigh with his head tilted halfway towards the ceiling. He had to answer it. Sansa had a beer bottle right there in her hands, which she had taken out of the refrigerator in his own kitchen. It wasn’t hard liquor, but it was still alcohol, and sometimes it was more addicting because a small amount never did the trick.

 

“I’ve just been under a lot of stress,” Sandor said in a casual manner, trying to be vague on purpose.

 

“Is it because of our fight?”

 

It wasn’t just because of their fight. The fight had been a small portion of it, but there was a lot more going on beneath the surface than that. However, Sandor couldn’t just admit those things to Sansa, so he ran his hand over his mouth as he resolved himself to hold back those truths. He rolled his bottom lip under his teeth, biting on it, and Sansa’s hand reached out to touch his forearm. The tips of her fingers were chilled and wet with condensation, eliciting the smallest of shivers from a few of his nerves.

 

“Sandor, I . . . ” Sansa’s voice trailed off, and then she bent over to place the beer bottle on the floor before she scooted closer to him. “I think we need to talk about it.”

 

“Okay,” he admitted, though he waited for her to say something first.

 

“Sandor,” she repeated, and he didn’t know she kept saying his name like that, “were you asking me to move in with you?”

 

Sandor at no point remembered thinking about that. He was terrified at finding Sansa’s things lying around in his place, whether it was in his bathroom or in his bedroom. Why would he ask her to move in with him? That didn’t make any sense at all. It wasn’t like she knew about his discomfort with those things, but if he had wanted her to move in with him, then he wouldn’t have felt like that about finding her stuff around his apartment. Sandor shook his head at her question. “No,” he told her honestly, “I wasn’t.”

 

He turned his head to meet her gaze, and Sansa stared back at him, searching his eyes. She must have found whatever she was looking for because her expression loosened up, and she lowered her eyes to her lap again. “That’s what I thought you were saying,” Sansa admitted out loud. “That’s why I got scared. That’s why I reacted the way I did.”

 

“I wanted you to see it,” Sandor said, looking forward again. “That was it.”

 

“Do you remember what you said?”

 

Sandor reached up to rub both of his hands over his face. He remembered what he said now. It wasn’t until a while after Sansa had left his apartment that he allowed himself to realize what had slipped out of his mouth, but when Sandor thought about it, he didn’t think of it as anything serious. Some part of him had wanted her approval on the place. He had wanted Sansa to see it and like it, and if she didn’t like it, then he could find something else. Sandor had no idea why he wanted her to like whatever place he got for himself, but she was going to be visiting him a lot. She ought to like it, shouldn’t she? It had made sense to him, anyway, when he thought of it like that.

 

“I just wanted you to like it,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean anything else by it.”

 

Sansa was quiet beside him on the couch, so Sandor turned to look at her again. She was watching him now, and there was no curious expression on her face or in her eyes. Sansa just appeared normal on the outside, though he had to wonder what was going on in her head. Sansa bit down on her bottom lip, tilting her head to the side.

 

“How serious are we?” she asked him, and Sandor wrinkled his forehead at the question.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“I mean,” Sansa said, “how serious are we? With each other? We’re dating. We’re seeing each other, but is that it? Are we going to stay together?”

 

All of her questions at once made Sandor sit up straighter on the couch. He felt an acute sense of nervousness take him over from head to toe, and he turned his body towards her. He held up his hands in front of himself. “What do you mean ‘are we going to stay together’?” Sandor questioned her. “Where is this coming from? I thought—” He paused, his mouth hanging halfway open. “I thought we were fine.”

 

Sansa’s hand reached out to touch his knee, and the gentle touch of her hand was soothing despite the anxiety he felt building up inside of him at the direction of their conversation. “I don’t mean we should break up,” Sansa explained to him. “I just wonder where we are headed together, I guess, in the long run.” She didn’t sound like she wanted to add the next bit, but she did. “If there’s a long run for us,” she whispered.

 

Sandor had never thought about that. At least, he had never thought about that knowingly for any reason. “I haven’t thought about it,” he confessed, shaking his head.

 

“Shouldn’t we think about it?” Sansa asked, her voice still a whisper.

 

“I don’t want you to go anywhere,” Sandor said at last, not knowing what else to say to her. “Isn’t that enough?”

 

“Well, I’ll be going to college soon . . . ”

 

“So?” Sandor proposed, cutting her off. “How is that going to change anything?”

 

“I don’t know,” she admitted quietly with a small shrug of her shoulders. Sansa hunched her shoulders as she glanced down at her lap again. “I’m not really good at these things,” she told him. “Joffrey was my longest relationship.”

 

It was in that moment that he reached out for her. His hand sought out hers in her lap, and he curled his fingers around her hand to hold it. Sandor didn’t know what he was doing anymore than she did, but it wasn’t like relationships could be planned out and mapped on a piece of paper. It didn’t work like that, even he knew that much about them. If Sansa wanted to see into the future, she wasn’t going to get anything but fuzzy static in response. All they could do was try at it. All they could do was see where it took them.

 

Sandor huffed at himself with the smallest strain of amusement aimed at his own uncertainty. “I’m not any better at this than you are,” he told Sansa, “so what’s the point in acting like we are? It’s not going to help us any.”

 

Their hands separated as Sansa gently pulled hers away. She leaned closer to him, then, and wrapped her arms around his neck for an embrace, resting her chin upon his shoulder. Though Sandor was still at first, he moved his arms around her to return the embrace, and Sansa whispered in his ear, “I don’t want you to drink if it makes you unhappy.”

 

It was so simple, those few words, but Sandor felt his hands tighten their clutch against her back and his arms pull her closer. Last time he drank, he had snapped on her. Sandor wasn’t so on edge now to snap at Sansa, but he wasn’t in the best state of mind either. Even though he hadn’t been drinking that much, he had still been drinking. It wasn’t drinking that made him unhappy, but Sandor knew what she meant by it. Sansa was just afraid of upsetting him again by questioning him or telling him what he could do, and so her wording was her way of saying she didn’t like it without pushing him. It wasn’t as if Sandor liked it, though. Sandor didn’t drink because he liked it. Sandor drank because it was a coping mechanism. It had always been a coping mechanism for him. Maybe one day she would understand that. Sandor didn’t think she understood that now.

 

“It’s the opposite,” Sandor found himself admitting quietly. Sansa’s hands traced themselves up and down on his back, softly rubbing, but he could tell she was listening to him. “I don’t drink, and become unhappy,” he explained, his voice falling even quieter than before. “I drink because I already am.”

 

Her hands stilled on his back.

 

“What made you unhappy?” she asked below her breath.

 

Sandor didn’t know how to answer that without incriminating himself, so he thought to blame it all on their argument instead. Sansa would believe that, even if it was only partly true. Sandor wouldn’t be lying to her with that, after all. He just wouldn’t be telling the whole truth. He couldn’t tell her about the job with Renly, anyway. That was something Sansa could never know about, and it wasn’t because Sandor wanted to lie to her or hide it from her. It was because she wouldn’t understand why he had done it at the time. She wouldn’t understand that he had done it to protect her because he feared what might happen to her.

 

Despite even doing it, though, he had still put her in danger. Renly’s job was a double-edged sword, and Sandor had to wield it either way. On one hand, there had been Renly’s threat. Loras had said it was only words, but there was no telling what Renly might have actually done in retaliation if Sandor refused the job. On the other hand, by doing the job, Sandor had helped Jaime Lannister get arrested for being a corrupt official, which meant every case he had ever worked on or provided evidence for would now be called into question. Criminals he had put away would get a chance to be free again, and among them, there was Sandor’s own brother.

 

His blood both boiled and ran cold at the very thought of it.

 

Oberyn and his daughters were supposed to take care of the mess in the fallout. They were meant to be the cleanup crew, but Sandor wondered if they would be able to manage getting those criminals alone long enough to do the job. They couldn’t target everyone either, obviously. Targeting everyone would draw too much attention to it. Rules from Renly probably stated to only go after the worst of them, the select few of those who would endanger the streets once more, making Kingsland unsafe. The irony in that was tenfold. A crime boss, cleaning up the streets. Sandor would laugh at it if he hadn’t once been a part of it.

 

Sandor was afraid, though, but he wasn’t afraid for himself. Sandor had never been afraid for himself. He could have died at any point during his old life, and he wouldn’t have cared at all. In fact, he might have even welcomed it as a reprieve from his miserable life. Somewhere along the way, though, things had changed for Sandor. His life wasn’t just about him anymore. There was more to it now. He had never imagined there might be more to life than just trying to survive or trying to get by. It had been all that he had ever known for the longest time that it had become a pattern for him. He would wake up, get through the day, and go to sleep. He would wake up the next day, and then he would repeat the cycle all over again. That had been Sandor’s life. There had been no meaning to it. It just was what it was. Pattern and repetition fueled by unending rage and alcoholic stupors. That had been his old contribution to himself, and there had been nothing more.

 

He had a real reason to feel fear now, though. Sandor had something he could lose. He had something that could be taken away from him. Someone, more like, and she was in his arms right now, completely unaware of the threat that lingered over their heads all because of him. Then again, it might have been there even without him, but Sandor couldn’t ignore his hand in it. His prints were on it, his blood and his sweat. Coerced or not, he had made a decision and followed through with it, and now there were very real consequences to that decision. He had played a part, a very real part, and Sansa didn’t even know it.

 

He had done it all to protect her, and the irony was that it still put her in danger.

 

Sandor realized that he had been silent in her arms the whole time. Sansa was still holding him, and she hadn’t said anything else to interrupt the quiet, but he knew she was waiting on a response from him, an answer to her question. Taking a deep breath, he noticed that his hand was in her hair, and he brushed his fingers through her long locks. Sandor wondered at how he was supposed to answer Sansa. He took a moment to sort out the words in his head before he said them out loud.

 

“Fear, I suppose,” Sandor told her, his voice sounding low and faraway.

 

“I didn’t know you were afraid of anything,” she whispered back to him, and he felt her hand come up to the back of his head. She stroked it through his hair as well, her long and careful fingers matching the motions of his hand against her hair.

 

Normally, Sandor would have snorted at something like that, but he wasn’t very amused right now, and he didn’t find it funny. Instead, he answered her with the truth. It made his heart pound hard inside of his ribcage, but she deserved to hear it. She would think it was because of their fight. She would think it was because of their relationship and the troubles they faced along the way. For now, Sandor would let her think those things, because he didn’t know what else to do. Still, what he said next was no lie.

 

“I’m afraid of losing you,” Sandor admitted below his breath.

 

Sansa’s hand froze in his hair, and she pulled away from him. Her arms pulled back until her hands rested upon his shoulders, and she looked into his eyes with an open and surprised expression upon her face. She looked as though she didn’t know what to make of it at first, and Sandor even feared for a second that she truly didn’t, but the expression upon her face softened as he thought this. Sansa leaned forward again, drawing him once more into a tight embrace within her arms, and he could feel her chest rising and falling with each breath against his own. He pressed his hands to her back, not wanting to let her go.

 

“You won’t lose me that easily,” she murmured next to his ear, and Sandor felt her turn her head beside his to place a kiss against his cheek close to his ear.

 

He closed his eyes, allowing himself to savor the moment. Sometimes they were so caught up in talking or kissing or touching that they never stopped for a moment to just enjoy the simplicity of this, of holding each other, of just being near each other. Sandor didn’t think a week could feel so long, but it felt as though it had been an eternity since the last moment he had had Sansa in his arms.

 

“So, please,” Sansa added softly, “don’t drink anymore because of me.”

 

Sandor realized, however, that was simply a promise he couldn’t make and know for certain that he’d be able to keep.

 

 


	68. Stranger in My House

_* * *_

 

Brienne wasn’t sure what she thought she would find when she got home, but it was unnaturally quiet when she opened the front door to the house she shared with Jaime. She stepped inside slowly, the sunlight filtering through the opening around her silhouette. Shutting the door behind herself, she wondered if Jaime was home. Without his identity as an officer of the law anymore, he felt like a lost child wandering around aimlessly. He didn’t know what to do with himself. He was jobless, purposeless, and it ate away at Brienne’s heart. Brienne didn’t understand why either, but he would only trim his beard instead of shaving it off all the way. She wondered if it had something to do with trying to hide himself. He acted like he was on the run, going nowhere.

 

Putting down some of her things, Brienne began to walk the house in search of him. Finally, as she drew closer to their bedroom, Brienne heard some rustling and movement beyond the door, so she slowly pushed it open to see what was on the other side. She found Jaime standing at the edge of the bed, a box lying open across the bunched up sheets that neither of them had bothered to fix that morning when they woke up, and in his hands was a gun. Jaime was loading it with bullets when Brienne spotted him. It caused an uneasy feeling of dread to well up in her stomach. The department took away his police issued gun when he was arrested, and he lost it permanently when his badge was taken from him. What was Jaime doing with a gun, and what did he plan on doing with it?

 

“Jaime,” Brienne said slowly, pointing at the gun in his hands, “where did you get that?”

 

“I bought it,” Jaime answered without looking up from the gun as he loaded it. “It’s protection,” he added, “for you and me.”

 

Brienne didn’t know how she felt about this as he said it, but the uneasy feeling in her stomach didn’t go away. “Have you forgotten I still have a gun?” Brienne asked him, and Jaime finally paused amidst loading the pistol in his hands. He glanced over at her, then. His hair was longer. He still had a beard, the one he had grown out while in jail, but it was neatly trimmed now. Jaime stared at her for a moment, and then he blinked, breaking his stillness.

 

“Two is better than one,” he admitted at last, returning his attention back to the gun to finish loading it. Brienne watched each of his movements, taking note of how his hands shook during the process. Jaime’s whole body was on edge. His nerves were completely shot. She could see it in every gesture of his hands, every twitch of his fingers, and the way he tilted his head to the side back and forth like he couldn’t get a good view of what he was looking at right in front of him.

 

“Jaime,” she began in that same slow voice that she started with, “you shouldn’t have a gun.”

 

Jaime froze at her words, his fingers clutching the gun tighter in his hands. He lowered one hand to his side as he lifted his gaze to Brienne, an accusing gleam reflected in his eyes.

 

“I shouldn’t have this in my hands, is that what you’re saying?” Jaime asked in a dangerously quiet voice. Suddenly, he waved the gun towards the television set behind him on the other side of the bedroom, pointing the barrel at the screen. Brienne jumped a little because she knew the gun was loaded, and Jaime was just waving it around the room like it was nothing. His voice rose with every word out of his mouth. “Did you see what was on the news the other day? Did you _see_ it, Brienne? Because Ramsay fucking Bolton is out of prison now, or did you miss that? Did it just fly right over your head?”

 

“Of course, I saw it,” Brienne shot back, agitation creeping into her tone at how he spoke to her, “but that doesn’t mean you just go out and _buy_ a gun because the department stripped you of yours—”

 

“My own fucking lawyer is representing him, Brienne!” Jaime exclaimed with disbelief, losing the last bit of his calm. His eyes looked wild as he gazed across the room at her, but then Jaime tore his gaze away from Brienne, and she didn’t know what to make of the situation. Brienne didn’t know the rules with lawyers, or how Baelish managed to swing both cases at the same time. She would have thought it a conflict of interest, but it seemed Baelish knew what he was doing if he could pull it off. “My _own_ lawyer,” Jaime continued more quietly, echoing her thoughts. “I mean, isn’t that a conflict of interest? How the hell did Ramsay get him as a lawyer? How is it even possible?”

 

“I don’t know,” Brienne admitted with all honesty, not knowing what else to say to him. She was glad, though, because Jaime’s hand that held the gun was lowered at his side now. He wasn’t flinging it around the room anymore. Brienne found herself shaking her head. “I don’t know how he got Ramsay’s case, but considering you aren’t on trial, maybe that’s how he managed it. He really isn’t representing you, Jaime. He’s only advising you at this point.”

 

“Some adviser,” Jaime said below his breath, his voice broken.

 

“Jaime,” Brienne urged gently, “can you please put down the gun?”

 

He lifted his gaze from the floor to the bed, and he listened to her this time. Jaime placed the gun into the open box sitting before him, and he moved to close it with the lid. It was just a shoebox, Brienne realized as she looked at it. She wondered if he had found it somewhere or bought a pair of shoes just to have a box for the gun, and when Jaime went to put the box away underneath the bed, Brienne felt a little bit better about everything. He crouched on the floor, sliding it under the bed on his side, which was closer towards the doorway, and stood up to turn and face her.

 

Brienne understood that he didn’t know what else to do. Jaime was just trying to handle the situation the best way that he knew how, which wasn’t a very good one. Ramsay couldn’t have been stupid enough to come directly after them if he was trying to say he wasn’t the serial killer, and Brienne doubted he would be out on the streets much longer, anyway. Despite Ramsay’s claims on the news, there had been plenty of evidence linking Ramsay to those murders and not all of it could have been faked. On top of that, other officers had been involved in the case, officers who could testify. Ramsay was smart enough to milk it for all it was worth, but Brienne was certain that he wouldn’t win this no matter how hard he tried to fight it.

 

Unconsciously, her hand reached up to lay flat across her collarbone. There were a few small patches on her body where Ramsay had flayed the skin, but it was nothing too bad. Brienne hadn’t been captured long enough by Ramsay to have any serious scars, and even emotionally, she had long since come to terms with the situation. Ramsay had only managed to knock her out; otherwise, he never would have gotten her tied up and in his hands, so her fear for him was nothing save common sense. He was no match for her if she was conscious, and Brienne knew this. Ramsay’s terror had been fleeting, and Brienne had withstood it. She had survived it, too. Ramsay had no fear over her anymore, and she wasn’t about to let him ruin her life just because he got a temporary out of jail free card.

 

Brienne knew there was nothing for them to truly fear from Ramsay, but Jaime was already shattered and at his wit’s end, and his state of mind wasn’t balanced anymore. He had lost his career, his reputation, the respect people had for him, and now he was planning to go up against his family in a court battle that could go on for years if Tywin used everything in his power to drag it out. Jaime didn’t know what to do with himself, and so he was letting himself go. Brienne noticed that he wasn’t physically taking care of himself. She noticed Jaime wasn’t eating properly ever since he had gotten back home, and he also wasn’t trying to find anything to occupy all of his extra time.

 

As he stood there looking like a haggard old puppy, his eyes pleading for her to help everything make sense again, Brienne resolved herself to cross the short distance between them and put her arms around his neck. Jaime just stood there for a moment until she felt his arms slowly circle her body to return the embrace, but he didn’t clutch onto her. His grip was weak, loose, and he let out a ragged breath beside her. Brienne raised her hand to hold the back of his head, and after some time of just holding him in silence, she began to stroke his hair. It was longer now, thin and straight. It felt oily like he hadn’t washed it in a day or two, and Brienne wondered when he had last taken a bath. It might have been a silly thought to some people, but every little thing that Jaime chose or forgot not to do spoke volumes to Brienne about just how well he wasn’t handling the situation.

 

Despite her advice and his lawyer’s advice, it seemed as if Jaime was beginning to regret his decision. It had put him between a rock and a hard place, caught between the media and his family and the slander from the department. He was an outcast now with no friends, and she, too, was feeling the heat of Jaime’s fall from grace. Work wasn’t the same anymore for Brienne. She had always loved her job, but working alongside jeering men who made fun of her all over again like they had when she had first joined the force as a young and eager female rookie was disconcerting for Brienne. She had escaped the hell of it when she had earned her place among them, but now the jeers and sideways glances and crude remarks were back. She was the center of their ridicule, and it was all because of Jaime.

 

Brienne didn’t blame Jaime for it, though. It wasn’t Jaime’s fault how the people at the department chose to act, and at least Loras had been the most supportive towards her in lieu of what he now knew about Jaime. Loras also knew from their talks together when on duty that she was still seeing Jaime because she refused to breakup with him over something like this. She had told Loras what Jaime did was in the past, and yes, he was paying for it now, but he was also a different person now. Very few people understood that, but Loras seemed to understand, and so Brienne shared those things with him that she normally wouldn’t have shared with anyone. It was good to get them off of her chest with someone, and Loras had been a good friend to her through all of it.

 

Pulling away from Jaime to gaze at his face, Brienne gave him a hardened look instead of a soft and sympathetic one. She took him by the chin, turned his head side to side as Jaime furrowed his brow in utter confusion, and then she said to him, “We’re shaving off that beard.”

 

“What if I want to keep it?” Jaime asked, though he didn’t sound like he was going to put up much of a fight to her suggestion.

 

“Too bad,” Brienne said, and she turned him around and marched him towards the bathroom. “We’re cutting it off.”

 

She sat him down on the toilet and put a towel around his shoulders. Grabbing the clippers, Brienne plugged them into the wall socket and used the bald blade to shave off his beard and mustache. Short hairs remained, but he could use a razor if he wanted a completely smooth face. After that, Brienne attached one of the guides onto clippers, using the longest one, and proceeded to buzz it through Jaime’s hair to cut off a good bit of the length. When she was done, Jaime had stubble on his face and his hair was only an inch and a half long, but he hadn’t bothered to argue with her at all about it. Brienne figured he simply didn’t care. She placed aside the clippers and cleaned him up, throwing away the fallen loose hair.

 

When she was done, she made a rising motion with both of her hands to indicate he should stand up. Jaime rose from the toilet, looking better than he had looked these last few days just by getting rid of all that extra hair, and Brienne managed to smile at him. “There,” she said with a note of finality. “You look ten times better.”

 

Jaime turned around and stepped in front of the counter to look at his reflection in the mirror on the wall. “I still look like me,” he said.

 

“But you look like a cleaner you,” Brienne corrected him, and then she took him by the shoulders again and pushed him towards the shower. “You also need to take a bath.”

 

“I don’t need a—”

 

“You need to take a bath,” she ordered, cutting him off, and Brienne walked around Jaime to pull back the shower curtain. She ran the water hot and then added some cold to it to find a nice balance in between, and when she stood up straight again, she turned to face Jaime. Brienne immediately began to strip him down, starting with his loose grey hoodie, then his shirt, and she bent down to help him out of his shoes, which were still on his feet. Without standing again, Brienne unfastened his jeans and pulled them down to his ankles. Jaime stepped out of them. She stood up again, and Brienne stripped off her own clothes. Jaime watched her in silence, not moving to take off anything else.

 

When she was standing naked before him, Brienne stared back at Jaime for a long moment without saying anything. He stared back. Brienne turned around and climbed into the tub. She heard the rustling movement of Jaime beyond the curtain as he finished undressing, and he joined her in the shower. Grabbing for the shampoo, Brienne took Jaime by one shoulder and guided him towards her with his back facing her. She poured some shampoo into her hand, placed the bottle aside, and lathered it through his hair. Her fingers massaged over his scalp, scrubbing occasionally, and then she guided him underneath the spray of the showerhead. The soap bubbles ran down Jaime’s back, even as he tilted his head forward.

 

She took a blue loofah, rubbed the soap over it, and then gently scrubbed down Jaime’s body. He said nothing the whole time, allowing her to bathe him. Eventually, Brienne turned him around and tended to his arms, shoulders, chest, stomach, and lower. When she finished with his legs, she stood up again. Jaime was looking at her, and she met his gaze. He reached for the other loofah, poured body wash over it, and returned the same gesture to her. Jaime bathed her as she had bathed him, paying close attention to each curve and joint. His eyes roved over her body as he did this, and where once Brienne felt self-conscious about his gaze, she no longer felt that way anymore.

 

She knew she wasn’t a typical beauty. She would win no contests and receive no rewards for it. Her body was square and tough where other women were round and soft, and she didn’t have any of the archetypal physical features that were supposed to mean a woman was attractive. Brienne had been mocked for it most of her life, and even Jaime had mocked her for it at first, but they had reached a turning point where the insults stopped and his respect for her was obvious. One time, Brienne had even caught Jaime staring at her body and not looking anywhere near her face, and it had been before the two of them ever got together as a couple.

 

She was attractive to Jaime, and that had been all that mattered to her. Jaime loved her imperfections and the little things that made her different. They had made an odd couple in the beginning. With his handsome appearance and her mannish one, Brienne felt the eyes as people looked between her and him and wondered how that came to be. No one questioned an ugly man with a beautiful woman, but when the tables were turned, people couldn’t stop gawking. Not that Brienne believed she was ugly, but she had never held her looks in high regard. Other people surely didn’t either.

 

When he finished scrubbing her down, Brienne walked around Jaime to step under the spray of the water. She put her face underneath it, letting the warm water flow all around her. Jaime’s arms slid around her middle, pulling her close to him. Brienne lifted her head from the spray of water and opened her eyes. She leaned into Jaime’s embrace, wondering how in the world she was supposed to help him. He was going to put himself to waste if he just stayed home all of the time and refused to leave the house, and Brienne didn’t want him to do that to himself. He needed to get out. He needed to find something to do. He needed to try to be normal, even if he didn’t feel like it anymore.

 

If Jaime didn’t do something, he was going to sink into depression. Brienne was already afraid that he was halfway there and getting worse everyday. With the high profile of the case and his presence on the news, no one would want to hire him. Finding a job was going to be near impossible, and Brienne tried to think of some sort of solution to the problem as the warm spray of water washed over her body and Jaime stood still behind her.

 

It hit her suddenly, then, and Brienne pulled away from Jaime’s arms. She turned around long enough to give him a kiss to not worry him, and stepped out of the shower carefully onto the mat below. Brienne snatched a towel to dry off with as Jaime peered around the shower curtain, giving her an inquisitive look.

 

“Where are you going?” Jaime asked, and his eyes fell from her face to her body as she dried off.

 

“I’ve got some things to take care of,” Brienne said, and she leaned forward to press her lips to his for a quick kiss. “Be good while I’m gone, okay?”

 

“Okay,” Jaime said, but he still looked confused. Brienne smiled at him and turned around to leave, heading back into their bedroom. She changed into a new set of clothes, scrubbed down her short hair until it was almost dry, and hurried out of the front door. If there was one person who knew how hard it was to start their life back over after a mishap with the law, then it was someone who might not have cared much for Jaime but was still friends with her despite that.

 

Brienne thought first that he might be working, so she got into her car and drove down the roads in Kingsland until Sandor’s familiar pub came into sight on the right side of the street. All of the lights were on inside, emitting a dim and cozy glow from the windows, and the place was packed as usual. It was one of the more popular pubs in the area, and if Brienne had been into chugging down beers, she might have actually visited it from time to time. As it was, she wasn’t a drinker, and she rarely came by Clegane’s Keep.

 

She exited her car, shutting the door behind herself, and stuffed her hands into her pockets as she walked up to the door. Brienne pulled one hand out long enough to pull open the door and walk inside. A gust of warm air hit her when she made her way into the pub, and her eyes immediately scanned the floor and the area behind the bar for Sandor. She spotted him behind the counter. It looked like he was in the middle of serving a patron, and so Brienne crossed the room to reach him.

 

Brienne took a seat at the bar, and Sandor looked up at her as she settled herself onto the stool. She offered him a smile and waited for him to finish up what he was doing, choosing to remain silent until he could talk to her. It only took him a few moments, but Sandor finished up with the patron and walked over to stand across from her.

 

“What brings you here?” he asked her, placing his hands down on the bar.

 

Brienne looked down at his hands for a moment, and then she raised her eyes to his face. “I needed some advice,” she began unsurely, wondering how he might react to what she was going to ask him.

 

Sandor aimed an incredulous look her way. “You want advice from me?” He snorted in disbelief. “What happened to your other options?”

 

“Let’s see,” Brienne said, making a joke out of it. She held up her hand, ticking off the lost options one by one with her fingers. “One of them got beheaded for treason, the other one drowned in the ocean, and the third one is halfway across the world trying to conquer a foreign nation. So, that leaves you.”

 

He shook his head at her. “What sort of advice?”

 

Sandor seemed to be open to humoring her, so Brienne thought she might relax a bit at that, but her hands patted her fingers nervously against the countertop with rhythmic thumps. “What did you do,” she asked, “after you were released? How did you find work again?”

 

In the middle of shifting around, Sandor froze behind the counter. He knew why she was asking that, and he knew who it was for. He was silent as if he didn’t want to answer her, but he did anyway. “I didn’t,” Sandor said, his voice taking on a terse quality.

 

“But—”

 

“I had to make my own work,” he said, cutting her off. Sandor held up his hands to indicate their surroundings, his eyes roving over the place as he spoke. “What do you think this is?” His hands lowered to the countertop again, and Sandor leveled his eyes with hers. “I used my savings. Started my own place. People don’t like hiring ex-convicts. Looks bad for them.”

 

Brienne understood what he was saying. She had feared as much. Jaime wasn’t an ex-convict like Sandor, but his image was tarnished beyond repair and the public spectacle surrounding it made it known to all of Kingsland. No one was going to hire someone like Jaime if they could help it, Brienne knew as much. She wanted to help Jaime find work, but how was he going to find work after all of this? Sandor started his own place, but there was nothing that Jaime knew how to do or loved doing that he could use to start a business. Nothing that Brienne could think of, anyway.

 

Just then, an idea came to her. She didn’t take the time to think it through before she asked it out loud. Brienne just asked it, which might not have been the smartest decision in the world.

 

“Do you need any help?” she piped up. “With the pub?”

 

Sandor narrowed his eyes. “What are you asking?”

 

“You could hire Jaime here,” Brienne suggested. “He could learn how to—”

 

Sandor slowly leaned over the counter, glaring at Brienne. There was a carefully contained anger held behind his eyes at such a question. The two of them might have been friends, but Sandor didn’t take too kindly to her suggestion if the look on his face was anything to go by. “I’m not hiring Jaime Lannister to work in my pub,” Sandor told her, keeping his voice low to ensure the conversation stayed just between the two of them.

 

Brienne knew Sandor and Jaime didn’t get along, which in and of itself was an understatement. Jaime had been responsible for many of Sandor’s arrests, and even though Sandor didn’t serve time for all of those things, it wasn’t like the two of them were on their way to becoming fast friends. Their history was rocky at the best of times and antagonistic at the worst, but Brienne thought maybe after all of this time that Sandor and Jaime could learn to let it go. If Jaime had something in common with anybody these days, he had something in common with Sandor Clegane.

 

“I know he doesn’t know anything about bartending, but he can learn,” Brienne pushed onward, though she lowered her voice as well. She didn’t even realize how desperate she sounded, but her voice was fraught with the ache of Jaime’s situation and the need to help him. “Jaime’s a fast learner—”

 

“I just said,” Sandor hissed between clenched teeth, cutting her off once more, “I’m not hiring Jaime Lannister to work in _my_ pub.”

 

Brienne hardened her gaze towards Sandor. “Why not?” she asked.

 

“Why not?” Sandor repeated, his eyes widened at the words. He leaned back from the counter. “Why not? Are you mad? Why would I try to help that prick after everything—”

 

“Maybe because the past is the past,” Brienne snapped, “and you ought to let it go. Jaime hasn’t done anything against you in a long time. He doesn’t even bother you anymore, and the two of you ought to—”

 

“I don’t need to do anything,” Sandor said. “This is my bar. These are my rules. I don’t have to help him. Lannister got himself into trouble. He can get himself out of it the same way I got out of mine. Do you think I had anyone to lend me a golden hand? Do you think anyone helped me?” Sandor leaned forward once more. “I helped myself,” Sandor told her, practically snarling the words at her, “and Lannister’s just going to have to learn how to do the same.”

 

Brienne stood up from the stool at the bar, glaring back at Sandor. “You didn’t just help yourself,” she said. “That’s utter bullshit, Sandor. You had Elder Brother there for you, helping you to get back on your feet. The least I’m asking is that you try to help Jaime. He needs someone as you needed someone, and maybe there is bad blood between the two of you. I can’t deny that, but I thought you were grown enough to act like an adult. When people are in trouble, they help each other out. They don’t hold grudges and act like spoiled kids. But if being an adult is too much for you, Sandor, then my apologies. I’m so _sorry_ to have bothered you.”

 

Brienne turned on the heels of her feet and stormed out of the pub without another word to Sandor. She was angry with him, and she was upset. She couldn’t understand how after all of this time with no incident between them that Sandor could still hold a grudge over the past. It wasn’t as if Jaime arrested Sandor for being an upstanding and model citizen. It wasn’t as if Jaime had stormed into Sandor’s house and arrested him for sitting down on his couch and watching television. Jaime had only been doing his job because Sandor had been intent once upon a time to break the law.

 

Sandor had brought those consequences down upon himself. He hadn’t needed Jaime to do it for him, and now he wanted to act like the victim in the end. Jaime was the bad guy, and Sandor was the innocent. It wasn’t fair, and it didn’t make any sense. None of those things had been Jaime’s fault, and Jaime didn’t deserve this treatment from Sandor of all people.

 

Brienne opened the door to her car, sitting down in the driver seat. As she shut the door, she stared through the windshield of her vehicle. Sandor had already gone back to work, busying himself behind the counter. Brienne saw a glimpse of his head through the crowd of bodies within the pub. She wondered if her conversation had had any effect on him whatsoever, but she wasn’t going to hold her breath over it.

 

Looking down at her steering wheel, she pulled out her keys from her pocket and stuck the car key into the ignition. The car cranked to life, and the radio came back on along with the engine. The heater started to run again, filling the car with a blanket of warmth to counteract the freezing weather beyond it. Winter was coming, and December was just around the corner. Soon, there should be snow falling down from the skies and filling the streets.

 

Idly, Brienne hoped it didn’t get too cold this year. Pulling the car out of park, she looked over her shoulder and out of the back window to see where she was going. The car backed out of the parking space with her guidance on the wheel, and Brienne paused the vehicle long enough to glance back at the pub. Sandor was nowhere in sight.

 

Frowning to herself, Brienne pulled out of the parking lot of Clegane’s Keep. She drove down the streets back home to Jaime, hoping to find another way to help him since this plan had obviously failed her.

 

 


	69. Don’t Make Me Say It Out Loud

_* * *_

 

Sansa was sitting down cross-legged on the floor in the living room with Arya beside her. She had agreed to help her sister with a poster for one of her school projects. Together, they were both working on it with markers, glue sticks, and images that needed to be pasted onto the board, and Sansa and Arya were almost about to be finished with it, too. The noise of the television filled up the living room in the background as their mother watched the news from the couch. At the moment, the lady forecaster was talking about the upcoming weather for the next few days into December. When the forecaster mentioned there would be snow falling tomorrow, Sansa lifted up her head at that, and beside her, so did Arya.

 

On the recliner a few feet from the couch, Ned shook open the next page of the newspaper he was reading in lieu of watching the news.

 

“Winter is coming,” Ned announced idly, and Sansa and Arya both turned their heads to look at each other. Simultaneously, they rolled their eyes at their father’s announcement. Of course, winter was coming if there was snow coming their way, too. Winter wouldn’t be coming without it in this part of the world. Sansa was surprised that it hadn’t snowed yet. Usually, the snows began in November, but the month passed without any incident of snow at all.

 

Once they were finished with Arya’s school project, Sansa helped her carry the poster board up to her room. Starting with the second week of December, school would be out for winter break. They had a long winter break from school in Kingsland. Three weeks in December, and the first week of January counted for break time. Arya’s project was one given to the students by one of her more strict teachers who believed in working until the very last minute. Sansa completed essays for three of her classes that were all due before winter break. She didn’t mind the work, though. Most teachers preferred to make their students complete assignments until the very end.

 

Sansa hurried over to her room afterwards, looked at the time, and started to get ready for leaving the house. Before it started snowing this year, she had wanted to go back to that cute little Dornish bar and grill over on Sunspear Avenue, so Sansa and Sandor had made a date of it today. He would be outside of her house at any moment, so she tried to get ready as fast as possible without looking like a mess in the end. Sansa took a minute in front of the mirror of her vanity to straighten her clothes and hair, and then she dashed down the staircase two steps at a time and rushed towards the front door.

 

“Have fun,” Catelyn said from the couch.

 

“Be safe,” Ned called out over the newspaper in his lap, lowering it long enough to look up at Sansa as she left.

 

She turned around long enough to wave goodbye to them. When Sansa shut the door behind her, she hurried across the lawn until she looked up and noticed Sandor’s car there on the curb. Spotting it, she halted all of a sudden and started walking instead of running. However, even from the front yard, she could see the amused look on Sandor’s face.

 

Sansa climbed into the passenger seat of his car, closed the door, and glanced over at Sandor. He was looking at her with a raised brow, fighting off a smile that threatened to upturn the corners of his mouth. He didn’t smile very often, so whenever he did smile, it usually made her smile, too. Sansa bit down on her bottom lip to fight it off, though.

 

“Ready?” he asked her, looking forward again and taking the car out of park.

 

“Ready,” Sansa agreed, and she buckled up as he pulled the car off of the curb.

 

The drive there didn’t take very long, and Sansa kept looking out of the window at the various streetlights that came on as the sky darkened around them for evening. The pathway to the bar and grill on Sunspear Avenue was lit up with millions of little lights. Once the bar and grill came into view, Sansa recognized the same strings of lights from last time hanging over the patio area off to the left side of the building. Sandor parked the car, and Sansa hopped out of it. They walked into the lobby together, and a young woman with curly dark hair in a black and white uniform greeted them with a cheerful voice and a big smile.

 

Unbeknownst to Sansa, Sandor had made reservations beforehand, so they were seated without a wait. They ordered their food, and Sansa told him all about what she had been up to lately. She also noticed that Sandor didn’t seem to be as on edge tonight as he had been recently. When she leaned over to kiss him across the small table, there was also no smell or taste of alcohol on him this time. After they had finished talking the other day at his apartment over his fears, Sansa had spent some more time with Sandor to ask about his alcoholism and for him to tell her more about it. She didn’t have a very good understanding of it, but then again, she had never been around any alcoholics before. No one in her family had the problem, and all of her friends were too young to have developed it, so she had never met anyone with it until Sandor.

 

After they had talked about it a little more at length that day, Sansa had asked him if she could pour out the beer in his refrigerator. Sandor had gone still at her request, and for a moment, he wouldn’t answer her. She knew he had spent money on it, but the thing was Sandor didn’t need to be drinking. She didn’t want him drinking. He wasn’t going to get better if he kept falling into it, and having alcohol just sitting in his refrigerator at his apartment wasn’t going to help him any. At some length, Sandor had reluctantly agreed. Sansa had then taken all of his remaining beer bottles and poured them out in the sink. From the couch, Sandor had watched her.

 

It had only been a few days since then, but Sansa hadn’t seen any more beer or liquor bottles in Sandor’s apartment. Leaning over the table to kiss him not even a minute ago also revealed to her that he hadn’t been drinking, which brought a small smile to her face. It crossed Sansa’s mind that he also had a sponsor, whose name was Elder Brother, and she wondered if Sandor had been talking to him recently about his slip ups. If not, she pondered the possibility of seeking out his sponsor and talking to him. Sandor might not like it if he found out, but Sansa was worried about whether or not Sandor had been making the effort to talk to his sponsor himself. What if he was hiding it from Elder Brother? In the long run it would only make him worse.

 

Filing away that thought for later, Sansa focused on eating the food on the plate before her. Sandor made fun of her as she picked off the peppers, but Sansa didn’t like peppers. She always picked them off, so she told Sandor to hush it despite the amused smile on her face. Not even twenty minutes into their meal, though, someone who wasn’t their waitress came up to their table. Sansa looked up at her, thinking at first that she was one of the waitresses in the establishment, but she was wearing a dress instead of a uniform. The woman was beautiful with a curvaceous body under her dress, flowing dark hair full of curls that reached her elbows, and naturally tanned dark skin. Instead of approaching both of them, the lady leaned her palm against the table on Sandor’s end.

 

When Sandor looked up at her, Sansa registered his look of shock and wondered who this woman was to give him such a look on his face. Her heart started to beat a little faster inside of her chest, and Sansa glanced between the two of them.

 

“Sandor, is that you?” the lady asked coyly, grinning down at him.

 

Instead of immediately answering her, Sandor looked over at Sansa. His look of shock was still there, and his discomfort was obvious. He removed his gaze from Sansa to look back at the woman.

 

“Yeah, how’ve you been?” he asked her right back.

 

“Oh, I’ve been great,” she told him, and she reached over to squeeze him on the shoulder. Suddenly, she looked over at Sansa and pulled her hand away from Sandor to extend it to Sansa. “Hi, I’m Arianne,” she said with a brilliant smile.

 

Though reluctantly, Sansa slowly reached out to accept her hand for a shake. The woman had a firm grip, and Sansa remembered something her father said about telling who a person was by their handshake. People with firm grips were often strong and honest, he said, and people with weak grips were often the opposite. Sansa had no idea if it was true or not. It was just something her father had always said about people.

 

“Sansa,” she introduced herself to Arianne, and the woman looked pleased to have learned her name. When their hands separated, a look of surprise overtook Arianne’s face and she stepped back from their table.

 

“Am I interrupting a date?” Arianne inquired, glancing between the two of them.

 

Sansa aimed her eyes straight at Sandor. He saw her look, and then he brought his gaze to Arianne. “Yeah, we’re in the middle of a date . . . ”

 

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Arianne said, and she stepped back from them. “Enjoy your evening, you two,” she told them, and she gave them both warm smiles before disappearing off into the crowd of tables.

 

Sansa had noticed Sandor’s discomfort, and her first thought had been to ask Sandor if that woman used to be someone he had once dated before. Only the problem to that was Sandor had said he never dated people before, and Sansa realized that the implications of what he might have done with that woman in the past were more than just sitting down and eating a meal like the two of them were doing right now. Sansa wasn’t sure at first what to call the cold sensation sliding down the center of her chest, but it felt like some kind of jealousy.

 

Sandor was quiet. He had gone back to eating like nothing had happened, only Sansa could tell he was a little on edge. He was probably waiting for her to say something. _Did you used to see that woman?_ Sansa thought to herself as she looked across the table at Sandor, and she wanted to ask the question out loud. It wasn’t the right question, though. Sandor could easily deny it.

 

“Did you used to sleep with her?” Sansa blurted out, and Sandor froze in the middle of chewing. He was still for a moment, and then he lowered his hand to the edge of the table to rest it there. Sansa watched as he finished chewing what was in his mouth and swallowed it, and Sandor raised his eyes to hers over the table.

 

“It was a long time ago,” he said calmly.

 

It shouldn’t have bothered her so much. It was in the past, like he said, so it wasn’t like Sandor was with her now. He was with Sansa. Logically, it shouldn’t have bothered her at all. What she felt wasn’t logical, though. It was emotional, and for some reason she couldn’t explain, it hurt like hell. Slowly, Sansa put down her fork and knife. She took one more sip of her tea, and then she got up from the table because she was about to cry and she _wasn’t_ going to cry in front of Sandor.

 

As she walked away from him, she heard Sandor call out to her. She heard him get up from the table. Sansa kept walking, though, just in the hope that she would reach the car before he reached her. Sandor’s hand grasped her shoulder before she reached it, and she froze in place. There were already tears on her face, and wiping them away wouldn’t stop the new ones that were about to fall, so Sansa kept her hands at her sides as Sandor came around her to stand in front of her.

 

His silence seemed like confusion. He stood before her without saying a word, and Sansa kept her head bowed to try and hide the silent tears that slipped down her cheeks. The knowledge alone of him sleeping with that woman put mental images in her head that she couldn’t erase, and her feelings for him flared up with anger and jealousy and ache towards them. _It was years ago_ , she tried to remind herself, but it didn’t make the images any less real.

 

“What’s wrong?” Sandor asked her, and Sansa detected a note of agitation in his voice. “Where were you going?”

 

“To the car,” she said softly. “That’s all.”

 

When she didn’t throw an accusation at him, he seemed to calm down. “What’s wrong?” Sandor asked again. “Why are you crying?”

 

“It’s nothing,” Sansa told him, reaching up to wipe her eyes with her fingers. “I shouldn’t be crying.”

 

She heard Sandor take a deep breath, but she didn’t look up to see the expression on his face. “Can you wait here?” he asked in a gentler tone.

 

Sansa nodded her head.

 

He walked off, and Sansa looked back after a little while to see that he had gone back to pay for their meal. When he headed back towards her, she quickly turned her head forward again. Sandor reached her side, and at first, he did nothing, but then she felt his hand press against her back with the softest of pushes as if to guide her forward to the car. “Come on,” Sandor murmured, and Sansa let him guide her towards the car where it was parked out on the curb.

 

Sandor opened the door for her, and she got into the passenger seat and buckled up. It wasn’t long before he was in the driver’s seat, and they were heading down the street. Sansa didn’t recognize the area, though, or any of the sights. The street lights became almost nonexistent as they drew closer to the outskirts of Kingsland near the beachfront, and Sansa only knew where they were due to the trees and the scent of the air filtering in from the crack at the top of the passenger side window. She could smell the sea salt on the air, and she glanced over at Sandor, wondering why he was bringing her out here to the beach.

 

During the whole ride to wherever they were going, they didn’t talk about what had happened at the restaurant. Sansa didn’t see the point in it, and Sandor must have already understood the basic reason of why she had gotten upset. There was nothing to really talk about when it came down to it, so Sansa was quiet as she tried to push the negative feelings from her mind. They drove and drove and drove until the trees parted away under the dark night sky, and Sansa could see the waves of the ocean in the distance. It was too cold to swim, but she thought about it anyway. White foam rolled up on the shore from black water, and above it, a deep blue sky almost black but not quite yet.

 

Sandor parked the car in front of an empty house, and Sansa glanced over at him curiously. He looked over at her, too, and she realized she wasn’t upset anymore. Her eyes darted ahead back to the house to examine it through the windshield, knowing if she stepped out of the car the wind would be a strong gale. She could feel it hitting the car without even stepping out of it. The house itself, though, was a nice and quaint little place. It had two stories, and the outside walls were painted an off-white cream color. Sansa couldn’t tell if the accented color of the window frames and door was dark blue or grey. In the darkness of night, almost all colors washed to blue or grey.

 

“Do you want to see it?” Sandor asked quietly from the seat beside her.

 

His question caused Sansa to look at him, and it dawned on her then where he had brought her. “Is this the house?” she blurted out, turning her head to gaze at it once more. It was beautiful, she thought, and she leaned forward in her seat as if it would help her to see it better without getting out of the car. Her hands touched the dashboard, but she realized she wanted to go inside. They couldn’t if he didn’t have a key, though, and he wouldn’t have a key unless Sandor already bought it.

 

“Yeah,” Sandor said, “this is it.”

 

“Do you already have a key?” Sansa asked next, her eyes still staring forward at the house, mesmerized, until she heard a metal jingle as Sandor pulled the keys out of the ignition.

 

“Right here,” he told her, and he held up his usual keys.

 

Sansa looked over at them, and she found herself raising her eyes to Sandor’s face. “You already bought it,” she said, and it wasn’t a question but a statement.

 

Sandor stared back at her. He was silent at first. “Yes,” he finally answered, and then he looked forward at the house through the windshield. “I wanted it,” he added in a quiet voice.

 

“Will you show it to me?” Sansa asked without hesitation, and he met her eyes once more. There was a look in his gaze that she couldn’t identify, but Sandor nodded his head and moved to get out of the vehicle. Sansa followed suit. She shut the door behind herself, feeling the roar of the wind around her. Quickly, she hurried up to the front door. Once Sandor reached it, he put the key into the doorknob and turned it, pushing open the door for them both. Sansa rushed inside to get away from the wind, and she turned around to watch as Sandor shut the door behind them.

 

Inside of the house, she could barely hear the wind anymore. Slowly, Sansa took her gaze away from Sandor and brought it across the main room. The inside of the house was even lovelier than the outside. The first room was huge, too. Sansa couldn’t tell if it was a living room or a lounge area, but she supposed it would be whatever Sandor wanted to make it. The walls were a sea foam green color with white paneling on the bottom half. The carpet beneath her feet was soft and plush, not hard or rough, and she moved her foot along it to marvel at the texture beneath her shoe. Even without her skin touching it, she could tell it was soft. Sansa turned around to survey the rest of the nearby area.

 

Off to the right, there was a smaller and more serious looking room. Its walls were dark green with white paneling below, and she wondered if it could be a studio or a study. She wandered inside of it, gazing around, and when she headed back to the doorway, she noticed Sandor was standing in the main foyer, watching her intently. Sansa paused in the doorway, noticing how she felt very self-conscious with his eyes on her like that. Wrapping her arms around herself, she aimed a curious look his way.

 

“What is it?” Sansa ventured to ask out loud, but Sandor simply shook his head.

 

“Nothing,” he said.

 

When he gave her no further answer, Sansa bit down on her bottom lip and wandered towards the hallway. There were two rooms on the left, a staircase on her right, and ahead of her, gorgeous floor length windows opening up to a view of the beach at night. Sansa walked towards it until she could almost touch the glass, staring out at the breathtaking sight before her. The lack of curtains made it beautiful, and she watched in silence as the waves rolled up on the shore, crashing against the sand with white foam in its wake.

 

Sansa felt Sandor’s presence behind her, and it reminded her of their first night together out on the pier—how she sensed him, even though he wasn’t within sight. His hand touched her shoulder, and she felt his fingers fold down and gently clutch her there. She wondered if he was watching the waves outside of the window with her, or if he was looking down at her instead.

 

“Do you like it?”

 

His voice sounded different than it usually did, coming out in a quiet rasp, and Sansa leaned back against him as she kept her eyes ahead of her.

 

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, and her hand reached up slowly to touch the glass. Her fingertips just grazed the cold, clear surface, and she turned around to look up at him and smile. “I’d like to see the rest of it.”

 

Sandor nodded his head, and he pulled back from her to give her space to move. Sansa spotted the staircase in the hallway, and she walked towards it to take the steps to the second floor. It opened up to a rounded indoor balcony area with a walkway heading off to the right and left. There were rooms to either side, and Sansa found herself holding her breath. The whole place was so beautiful. She wanted to live in a place like this one day out by the beach with not a care in the world. She was almost jealous that Sandor would be living here and not her.

 

Sansa headed off down the right to investigate all of the rooms. She didn’t fully step inside any of them until she reached the right side and found the master bedroom. Its walls were dark teal with white accents and the carpet was darker, and off to the right of the room there was a small balcony. Sansa walked right up to it to gaze out of the glass door at the beach below. The sight of the beach was ten times more mesmerizing from the second floor than the first floor. She could have stood there for hours just watching as the waves crashed against the shore, but she knew they wouldn’t be here for much longer. Sandor had just brought her here to show her the place. They obviously weren’t staying.

 

When she turned around again, she found Sandor standing in the doorway to the master bedroom, watching her again. This time his arms were crossed over his chest as he regarded her across the distance. Sansa mirrored his pose, folding her arms over her chest and raising her chin at him. She couldn’t help but wonder why he kept watching her as she inspected his new house.

 

“What is it?” she asked him.

 

Sandor shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing,” he said.

 

Sansa felt a smile crease her face and wrinkle the corner of her eyes, a soft laugh bubbling up from her throat. “Why are you watching me?”

 

Sandor pushed himself off of the doorframe and uncrossed his arms. He made his way over to her with a slow deliberation that set her heart rate at erratic, and Sansa had to lift her chin a little bit more once he reached her. “What?” Sandor asked her, his voice low and deep. It sent tingles down her spine, just like the first time they had ever met each other. “I can’t look at you?”

 

She found herself shaking her head without breaking eye contact. “No,” she said softly, “you can look.”

 

Sandor reached out with his hand, but it hovered just an inch away from the side of her jaw without actually touching her. “Can I touch?” he murmured, and the light from the windows gave his eyes a sharp gleam. Sansa was frozen at first, but she nodded her head in response.

 

“Yes,” she whispered, and Sandor’s hand finally touched her, causing her eyes to fall to a close. His hand was gentle against her jaw, his thumb stroking an arch against her cheek.

 

He leaned closer to her. “Can I kiss?” Sandor asked in an even lower voice.

 

Sansa let out a shaky breath, tilting her head into his palm. Slowly, she opened her eyes to the darkness around them. Sandor was just inches from her face. Again, she quickly nodded her head to give permission. “Yes—”

 

His lips were on hers by the end of the word, capturing it as she spoke it aloud for him. Sansa opened her mouth for him, leaning back into his hand, which was now on the back of her head. Sandor parted his lips against hers and deepened the kiss with his tongue, and the heat of his mouth was a pleasant change from the freezing air they encountered outside of the house. Sansa reached up to hold him on either side of his neck, and Sandor started to walk her backwards. She had to move her feet, too, or trip on them, as Sandor backed her straight into the wall behind her. As she hit it, she gasped against his mouth, but that only made them start kissing with equal amounts of passion and quickness. There was an eagerness to get closer, but they were already as close as close could be.

 

Sandor’s hand fell to her side. He pushed aside her coat, and then slid his hand underneath her sweater and shirt until it was touching her bare skin. Sansa jolted at the touch because his hand was so cold, but she didn’t stop kissing him and she didn’t pull away. His hand roved over waist, her side, and along her back, finally wrapping around her to pull her closer. Sandor’s movements were becoming stronger and more insistent. He pulled away from her lips and kissed her jaw, working his way down her neck. Before Sansa could register what might come next, he completely surprised her by lowering himself to his knees before her and reaching out to pull free the fastenings of her pants.

 

Sansa grabbed his hands by the wrists to stop him, squeezing firmly. Some part of her stomach lurched with pleasure, remembering the things he had said he wanted to do to her with his mouth when he was drunk, but now was not the time and this was not the place. She also got the distinct feeling that he was only doing this because she had gotten upset over Arianne at the bar and grill and that somehow Sandor thought he could fix it if he just showed her how much he wanted her—but Sansa already knew how much he wanted her, and she didn’t need for him to prove it. She also certainly didn’t want their first time of intimacy together to be tainted by insecurities, and she was sure if they did anything just now, it would be fueled by them.

 

“Please, Sandor, stand up,” she managed to say, finding her mouth incredibly dry.

 

He didn’t answer her. Instead, Sandor pressed his forehead against her shirt, and then he turned his head sideways to lay it against her. Both of his hands moved to her hips, his fingers gripping her firmly. She knew he wanted her. She knew they hadn’t yet gone that far, but Sansa also knew this wasn’t the right moment either. She wanted those things as much as him now, and she had been wanting them for some time, but she had never found the courage to push the extra mile. Sansa mirrored Sandor’s desires in herself, and she knew she wanted to explore that with him—but not right after she had gotten upset over one of his past flings.

 

He knelt there in silence for a little while, but then Sandor pushed himself back onto his feet. He wasn’t frustrated from what she could tell, but it wouldn’t surprise her if all her denial brought that out in him. Sandor pulled her into his arms, hugging her close to his chest, and Sansa allowed herself to rest her head against his chest as she closed her eyes. Sandor hugged her a little tighter than necessary, and she wondered silently if he was trying to say something with it without having to use words.

 

“It’s an amazing place,” Sansa told him, her voice slightly muffled with her angle against him. Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt beneath his jacket.

 

“So,” he began slowly, “you like it?”

 

Whereas before she had felt uncomfortable to be asked such a question, Sansa didn’t feel that way about it anymore. She smiled tenderly at his question, even though he couldn’t see it.

 

“Yes, I like it,” Sansa whispered in response. She tilted her head up, pressing her chin to his chest, to look up at him. “We should decorate it.”

 

“We?” Sandor asked, raising his eyebrows.

 

“Yes, we,” Sansa informed him, and she poked at his chest with one of her fingers. “You’re a man. You don’t know how to decorate.”

 

Sandor huffed at her. “Says who?”

 

“Have you seen your apartment?” Sansa asked.

 

Sandor was quiet for a moment as he mused over it. “Hm,” he said, “you have a point.”

 

“Of course, I have a point,” Sansa shot back, wrapping her arms around him once more. “You’re going to need my help if you expect this to look like a proper house.”

 

“I could make it look like a proper house,” he argued.

 

“Not without me.”

 

Sandor had fallen silent again, and Sansa wondered what he was thinking. She felt his hand pass up and down on her back, and he leaned forward to rest his chin upon her hair.

 

“No,” he said, “not without you.”

 

 


	70. It’s All Gonna Happen

_* * *_

 

“Dad, it was an _accident_!” Arya shouted, trying to get her father to understand her position, but it didn’t seem like he wanted to understand it any further. Still, it wasn’t all her fault. That idiot cut in front of her without a blinker on, and how was she supposed to know that he would be turning into her lane when he just literally swept in out of nowhere?

 

“You know what, Arya,” Ned began her in a deceptively calm voice, though he raised his brow at her and his expression was anything but calm. “I don’t want to hear it. This is _fourth_ time you’ve crashed one of our vehicles—”

 

“It’s only the third!” Arya shot back, her eyes going wide.

 

“That was your mother’s vehicle!” Ned shouted back at her. “The only one she had to get back and forth to work, and now it’s not drivable. They are probably going to total it, and I’ve got the pay the deductible—”

 

“Dad,” Jon cut in from where he was leaning against the wall with his shoulder, not far from them. His arms were crossed over his chest as he shrugged his shoulders. “I can pay the deductible. I have some money saved up, and Catelyn can borrow my jeep until the check comes back from the car, which should help the two of you be able to buy a new one.”

 

After a long shouting match, there was finally silence within the Stark household again. Arya had never been more thankful for Jon than she was in that moment. Outside of Sansa, Arya was the closest to Jon. He was always trying to look out for her. He looked out a lot for Sansa, too. He understood that it was an accident and that it wasn’t all Arya’s fault, but her parents didn’t seem to care. To them, she was just being a troublemaker again.

 

All innocence aside in the current case, Arya was at fault when she had crashed the first two vehicles. It wasn’t because she had a death wish or anything stupid like that. The first time was a dare gone too far, and the second time was to prove she was fearless when the kids from school were calling her a coward. She punched one of them in the face, but that hadn’t solved the issue. Arya had snatched up her parents keys, and then she had drove out to meet the other kids on the streets after dusk despite not having a license to drive. Somehow, after an intense showdown with a group of troublemakers like herself, Arya and another kid decided to race each other, and when she tried to feint the wheels to drift the vehicle, it didn’t work. Instead, Arya just ended up swerving and crashing the car.

 

Admittedly, it wasn’t the best way to prove she was fearless in the face of taunting peers, but Arya had only been fourteen at the time.

 

“That’s very kind of you, Jon,” Catelyn said from edge of the dining room wall, which cut it off from the living room. Jon was propped up against the wall, so he turned to look at her as she said this. It was rare to see sweet moments between Jon and Cat, but Jon smiled faintly in her direction and Catelyn returned the smile with warm eyes.

 

“That still doesn’t solve the issue of Arya’s involvement,” Ned said firmly.

 

“Dad, it was an accident,” Jon began, but Ned cut him off.

 

“It’s always an accident,” Ned reiterated. “Every time Arya comes to me with something like this, she claims it’s an accident, and then later I find out it wasn’t an accident.” He turned his steely gaze onto Arya, shaking his head at her. “I’m tired of you crying wolf, Arya. It’s the same thing every time, and I try. I try very hard, but I’ve had it to my limit. I’m not going to stand for it anymore.”

 

Arya, for once, felt like a lost little girl as she looked between her father, mother, and Jon with wide, fearful eyes. What were they going to do to her, then? They had already sent her to camp for the other offenses she had committed when she was younger. Now, what were they going to do? They couldn’t very well send her to camp over winter break. It was Christmas time, too, and she wanted to spend it with Jon and Sansa and Robb and Theon and—

 

“You’re going to your uncle’s for the holidays,” Ned told her.

 

Arya’s eyes went even wider. “No, Dad, please—”

 

“I won’t hear _another_ word of it.”

 

“Ned,” Catelyn said, “Edmure is no fit punishment for Arya—”

 

“I wasn’t talking about Edmure,” Ned replied, turning around to face Catelyn. “I was talking about Brynden.”

 

“Dad, please,” Arya pleaded with him. “I want to stay home for the holidays. I want—”

 

“Then, you should have thought about that _before_ you wrecked your mother’s vehicle,” Ned replied icily.

 

“I _hate_ you! “ Arya shouted at him, feeling tears sting the back of her eyes. “I hate _all_ of you!”

 

“Go to your room,” Ned ordered, “and don’t come back down until you learn how to act like a lady.”

 

“I’m _not_ a lady!” Arya hollered at him, and she dashed away from all of them before anyone could get a chance to respond to her. She ran up the stairs two steps at a time, and when she got to her room, she slammed the door shut. Arya never cried, not for any reason in the world, so though tears had stung the back of her eyes, she refused to let them fall. Arya took deep breaths to calm herself, tilting her head back and letting the tears settle behind her eyes again.

 

As she stood in the center of her room like that, she heard the faint crack of the door, but Arya didn’t want to turn around to see who was coming to interrupt her. If they had any sense at all, whoever it was would leave immediately before she bit their head off.

 

The door creaked shut once more, and Arya heard footsteps behind her. Finally, she dared to turn around and look at the intruder, but it was Sansa. All of the huff went out of Arya’s chest, her stiff shoulders fell loose, and the tough expression upon her face probably melted into that of an upset teenager, which was exactly what she was to begin with, anyway. As much as she put on a show of bravado, Arya was just another teenager underneath it all, just trying to get by. Sansa and Jon, of all people, understood this about her.

 

With all of the times that Sansa had come to Arya for help these past few months, the tables were finally reversed on them. Arya was the one needing help now, not that Sansa could help her much in this situation, but she could listen to Arya like the big sister she was and pat her shoulder and tell her she believed her, even if father didn’t. It was all Arya needed, anyway. Sometimes she was tired of just trying to be so strong, and for once in her life, she wanted to let down the armor. She could trust Sansa with that, she knew. Sansa trusted Arya with so much. They wouldn’t be very good sisters if it wasn’t mutual.

 

“I heard the fighting,” Sansa said quietly, folding her hands in front of herself and twisting them together with nervous motions.

 

Arya pursed her lips and looked away, nodding her head. “Yeah,” she said. “Dad thinks I crashed the vehicle on purpose.”

 

“Maybe I could talk to him—”

 

“It won’t change his mind,” Arya said, looking back at her sister. “He’s sending me to Uncle Brynden’s for the holidays.”

 

Sansa narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “Isn’t that more of a field trip for you than a punishment?” she asked.

 

“It’s a punishment,” Arya deadpanned. “I broke his Eagles’ vinyl last time I was over there.”

 

Sansa hissed inwardly. “Ooh,” she said. “Yeah, that’s not good.”

 

Arya sighed and marched over to her bed to plop herself down onto it. “It’s no use,” Arya told her. “Dad won’t listen to me. He won’t listen to you. He won’t listen to Jon. They’re going to send me to Uncle Brynden’s, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

 

Sansa sat down on the bed beside her with the mattress giving away the smallest creak, and Arya could feel it as the bed sank itself towards her sister. There was nothing Sansa could say that was going to make things better, and Sansa’s silence was indicative of her realization on that as well, but her presence alone was enough for Arya. Tenderly, Sansa reached across the bed for Arya’s hand and held it. Arya grasped her back. Neither of them would be able to change father’s mind, and Arya was angry. She was angry because she was going to miss seeing Robb and Theon before they even got here. She was angry because she was going to be spending Christmas away from her family all over a stupid mistake, and she was angry because it also meant she was going to miss Sansa’s birthday.

 

“You won’t be here for my birthday,” Sansa said sadly, turning her head towards Arya. It was as if she had been reading Arya’s thoughts just as they were running through her head. Arya sometimes wondered if she and Sansa had wavelengths they were able to tune into sometimes. More often than not, they always seemed to know what the other one was thinking without even realizing it.

 

“Maybe I can come up for that day,” Arya told her, trying to sound chipper. “If I can’t, I’ll give you a call.”

 

Sansa smiled at her, though it was still a little sad. “But I want you to _be_ here,” she said, looking at Arya with a set of lost puppy eyes. Sansa might have had big blue eyes, but she could work a puppy dog look like it was nobody’s business.

 

Arya sighed as she looked down at her lap. “Well, I can’t be here,” Arya said. “I messed up. Now, I’ve got to pay the price.”

 

“Don’t talk like that,” Sansa commanded, and she clutched her fingers a little more tightly around Arya’s hand. “Dad is being a fool because he’s upset. Maybe it won’t be for the entire holidays. I’ll talk to him. You should come home sooner than that. For one, it’s Christmas time. You should be spending it with us, not Uncle Brynden, and secondly, you can’t just miss my birthday. I want you there. Dad will understand if I talk to him.”

 

“You can try,” Arya told her, glancing over at Sansa, “but I wouldn’t bet on him seeing the light.”

 

“I’ll still try,” Sansa said.

 

Arya always thought that was one of the best things about her sister. Sansa was ridiculously hopeful, and because of it, she never gave up. Arya often gave up out of frustration or annoyance alone, but those things never deterred Sansa. Whenever Arya got tired of fighting against something, which did happen from time to time, Sansa stood up and finished it for Arya. It was exactly what a big sister should do for their little sister, and Arya found herself leaning towards Sansa to wrap her arms around her sister’s neck.

 

“I’m going to miss you,” Arya spoke softly beside Sansa’s head, and she felt her sister’s arms come up to wrap around her in a hug, too.

 

“I’m going to miss you, too,” Sansa whispered back. When they finally pulled away from each other, Sansa gave Arya an expectant look. “Make sure to call when you can, but if you can’t call me because of Uncle Brynden being strict about you on the phone, then text me.”

 

“I will,” Arya agreed, and Sansa smiled sadly and leaned forward to give her another hug.

 

For the next three days, Ned didn’t listen to anyone who tried to tell him about the poor decision on his behalf. They all tried to get him to change his mind, and none of it worked. Sansa tried speaking to him, and then Jon tried speaking to him. Bran only incriminated Arya further, and Rickon didn’t seem to get what was going on, anyway. At the end of the three days, even Arya went up to their father and asked him if he had changed his mind and if she could stay home for the holidays. He looked up from his newspaper with an expression like a stone, and then he told her she was going to go over to Uncle Brynden’s place for the holidays whether she liked it or not. Nothing was going to change his decision, he said. It was final.

 

Jon offered to take Arya to the bus station, and Ned consented to that at the very least. With all of her bags in tow, Arya ambled across the front lawn to Jon’s jeep. She tossed her things into the backseat, and Jon came out of the house not shortly after. It felt like that first time when she got sent away to camp for all of her reckless behavior. The illegal driving, the smoking, and the fights she got into at school and after school. Arya wasn’t as bad as that anymore because she had grown up, and in a way, Gendry had helped straighten her out, too.

 

Arya didn’t have a bad childhood or anything like that. It wasn’t why she had done a lot of the things she had done. She had just gone through a rebellious phase when she was younger, and most of it was out of her system by now. The car wreck this time really was an accident, but Ned was so used to Arya doing things on purpose that a teeny tiny part of her brain really couldn’t blame him for his extreme measures. Still, she was angry as hell at him because it wasn’t fair. Ned was judging her without even wanting to listen to the entire story, and he just assumed she did it just to do it. The whole thing was so aggravating to Arya, but she was going to suck it up.

 

Arya hopped into the passenger seat of Jon’s jeep as he slid in on the driver side. She buckled up because her father was watching them from the windows, and Jon buckled up, too. He looked over his shoulder as he backed the jeep out of the driveway, and Arya glanced over her shoulder to look as well. Once they were on the street, Jon pulled off and headed in the direction of the city’s bus station. It was so early in the morning that Arya doubted anyone else would be there. It wasn’t the usual public bus transportation within the city, but one meant for long distance traveling. Uncle Brynden didn’t live in the city limits of Kingsland. He lived beyond the outskirts of Kingsland in a nice big house that reminded Arya strongly of woodland cabins with its brown and orange colors and log design. It was a huge house, though, not small like a cabin, and the whole place had been built with a strong structure instead of the usual flimsiness associated with a hut in the woods.

 

Uncle Brynden loved living away from people because he always said he was never very fond of them in the first place. He minded his own business, and he had never even bothered to get married to anybody. While he didn’t talk about his private life and neither did Catelyn, Arya knew Uncle Brynden had lived with men from time to time during his life. Arya knew what that meant, too. Uncle Brynden never got married because he wasn’t into women and making babies. There was nothing wrong with it in this day and age, but Uncle Brynden preferred his privacy. Not only that, but he came from a very different time period where that sort of thing had never been acceptable, and so his silence on the matter had never surprised Arya either.

 

As they drove down the streets, Arya was unusually silent as she gazed out of the passenger side window. Jon left her to her silence for the moment, for which Arya was thankful. She loved Jon, and she loved talking to Jon, but just for this short ride to the bus station, Arya didn’t feel like talking. She had talked herself out for four days straight, and it had gotten her absolutely nowhere except for a one-way trip to Uncle Brynden’s house for the holidays. So right now, talking was not very high on her list of things to do.

 

When they reached the bus station, Jon pulled into the parking lot and parked the jeep. The entire place was empty, and some leaves blew slowly across the pavement. It reminded Arya of those Western films that always zoomed in on the street in the small town as a tumbleweed rolled by on the screen. Shaking the thought from her head, she opened the passenger side door and hopped down onto the pavement. Arya shut the door and went to open the one to the backseat to grab her bags. She took her messenger bag and slung it over her shoulders, and then she grabbed the two duffle bags.

 

Jon didn’t offer to help her carry any of them because he knew by now that she would tell him no. Arya didn’t like people helping her if she knew she could do it. It was one of her things. It was kind of people to offer, but she would rather do it herself. With her duffle bags in hand, Arya walked over to the empty benches and dropped her bags on the ground next to one of them. The sun shone low in the sky given the hour of day, but it was bright and painful to look at it. From the bench as she dropped her things down, it shone directly against her back. The air was freezing, so Arya was glad she had brought her coat with her and bundled up sufficiently in proper winter clothes.

 

She turned to look at Jon, who was dressed up in a pair of dark blue jeans and a thick black and white sweater with a scarf thrown around his neck. His hands were tucked into his pants pockets, and he glanced over at the empty station to squint at it with the sun halfway in his eyes.

 

“What time does your ticket say?” Jon asked, shielding his eyes with his hand.

 

Arya fetched the ticket out of her pocket and looked at it. “Eight o’clock,” she told him.

 

“Well, you’ve got a bit of a wait, then,” Jon said, and he turned to her to offer her a small smile. Arya, however, found it hard to smile back.

 

Jon walked around her to sit down on the bench. Arya followed his example, and she took a seat right beside him. The flimsy bench creaked under their combined weight. The two of them were quiet again as they both stared forward at the bus station’s outside walls of brick done up in many different colors. Arya tried to count all of the different colors, but she couldn’t keep up with which ones she had counted already, so she gave up after about five different tries.

 

“You should be back before the holidays are over,” Jon said, and that brought Arya’s attention back to him.

 

“I doubt it,” she countered, raising her eyebrows briefly at the words that came out of her mouth. She glanced over at Jon to see he was smiling at her, his hand shielding his eyes from the sun again because now it was directly in his face.

 

“You will be,” he insisted, and he looked forward again. “Dad won’t make you spend all of Christmas break at Uncle Brynden’s. He’s just mad right now. Give him a week or two, and he’ll be over it, especially since I’m letting Catelyn use my jeep and I’m paying the deductible, too.”

 

“That was really nice of you,” Arya told him. “To do that, you know, for Mum.”

 

“I don’t hate her like a lot of you think,” Jon said, and he sounded very serious. “She’s been good to me. Given the strange circumstances.”

 

“I don’t think you hate her,” Arya refuted. “I’ve never thought that.”

 

Jon looked down at her again, covering his eyes once more. “I just want to help,” Jon revealed in all honesty, “in whatever ways I can.”

 

“I know,” Arya said softly. “We all know. You’re part of the family, too. You always have been. You’re more of a brother to me than Robb, Bran, Rickon, or Theon—and don’t get me wrong, I love them all. They’re my family, too.” Arya looked up at Jon on the bench beside her. “But you’re my favorite, even though I know I’m not supposed to have favorites.”

 

Jon grinned at her confession, and then he leaned forward without warning to ruffle her hair. Arya made an annoyed sound in the back of her throat and tried to pull away from him, but Jon laughed at her. “What about Sansa?” he asked.

 

“Well, I’ve only got one sister,” Arya said, grinning. “Of course she’s my favorite sister.”

 

Jon laughed at that, too.

 

They sat together for a while, just talking. Jon caught her up on what he had been up to at college, and Arya caught him up on what she had been up to at school, at home, and with her friends. Eventually, though, Arya had grown a little tired of talking, and she decided that she just wanted some time alone.

 

She looked up at Jon. “You know, you don’t have to stay with me the entire time. You can go ahead and drive back home. I can make the rest of the wait alone.”

 

Jon gave her a funny look, though. “You’re not planning on jetting out, are you?” he asked.

 

Arya gave him a look right back. She knew she couldn’t get out of this situation, and trying to flee from it would only make her look guiltier in their father’s eyes. “No,” she said, “I’m not jetting out. I’m staying until the bus comes. Dad will kill me if I don’t, and then I’ll be grounded for a whole year instead of just spending the holidays with Uncle Brynden in his remote cabin in the woods.”

 

Jon was amused by her prediction, and he leaned over the bench to pull Arya into a hug. “Well,” he said beside her head, “be good for Uncle Brynden, or he’ll truss you up like a fish.”

 

“I promise I’ll be good,” Arya told him. When she finally pulled away from Jon’s hug, he smiled almost sadly at her, and Arya ended up throwing her arms around his neck all over again for an even tighter hug this time. Jon didn’t mind, though. He didn’t complain at all.

 

Arya watched as he got up and left a few moments later, and she waved at him as he pulled the jeep out of the parking lot. She waited until he was completely out of sight before she fished into her pockets and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Despite being better than what she used to be, Arya still had a bad habit sometimes of smoking when no one was looking. She wasn’t addicted to cigarettes, and she never craved them, but sometimes she just wanted a smoke.

 

She brought one of the cigarettes to her mouth and lit it, tucking her lighter away into her pocket again. Arya puffed on the cigarette in peace without anyone to disturb her. She didn’t talk about it with Jon or with Sansa. Neither of them would approve, Arya knew. They would tell her to stop smoking because it was bad for her, but Arya didn’t smoke all of the time, so she didn’t think it was all that bad for her unless she made a habit out of it.

 

As she sat there in peace with her cigarette, Arya noticed a shadow out of the corner of her eyes. Someone else had come up to the bus station, sitting down on one of the benches a few spaces down from hers. Arya quickly took the cigarette out of her mouth, dropping it to the pavement beside her bench and crushing it with her foot. The person was an adult, and she knew she didn’t look old enough to be smoking cigarettes. Arya didn’t want the person to say anything to her about it.

 

She stared forward at the bus station, but out of the corner of her eyes yet again, she noticed movement. The man got up from his bench, and he was making his way over to hers.

 

Arya shouldn’t have panicked, but for a moment she did, though she hid it. The man took a seat on the opposite end of her bench. Finally, Arya allowed herself to look at him. He had a cigarette in his hands, and he held it up for her to see it clearly.

 

“Have you got a light?” he asked her in a pleasant voice, and Arya was at first floored by his question. He had seen her smoking. Well, he didn’t seem to care.

 

Arya’s panic subsided inside of her chest, and she reached into her pocket for her lighter. She went to hand it to the man, but he put his cigarette between his lips and leaned forward as if beckoning her to light it. Arya was a little bothered by this, and for a second, she was completely frozen. _It’s just a cigarette, idiot_ , she told herself.

 

Arya flicked on the lighter, holding it up to his cigarette.

 

Once it was lit, he sat back away from her almost instantly. Arya watched as he smoked his cigarette, never once looking back at her. Maybe he just wanted a light and that was it. Arya would have shrugged her shoulders, but she just looked forward at the bus station again instead.

 

“What’s your name?” the man asked her.

 

Arya narrowed her eyes. She didn’t give her name out to strangers, so she tried to think quickly, but only one name immediately came to mind. “Sansa,” she told him, sounding bored.

 

The man was quiet at that.

 

“What’s your name?” Arya asked, thinking it was only fair, even if she did give him a fake name. She glanced over at him. He looked up from his cigarette. His eyes were beady, she thought, and cold.

 

It sent a shiver down her spine.

 

“Ramsay,” he told her slowly, and he held out his hand as if for a handshake. “Ramsay Bolton.”

 

Arya stared at those cold eyes for only one more second, and then she jumped up from the bench and bolted in the opposite direction.

 

Arya didn’t care about her things. She didn’t care about her bags. She could buy news clothes, and she could replace everything else inside of those bags if someone just walked up to the bus station and swiped them because they were left unattended. The only thing Arya cared about was getting away from him. She had watched the news. She had heard his name. Maybe she didn’t remember his face, but she knew his name. He was a murderer, a serial killer, and a sick psycho—and she had been sitting alone on a bench with him with no one else around to hear her if she screamed.

 

Arya ran in a mad dash across the street and down the sidewalks in front of the houses. She thought about running up to one of them and banging on the door, but what if she got to the door and no one was home to help her? What if they were home but not awake, and they didn’t answer the door on time? As these thoughts passed through Arya’s head, she continued to run as fast as her feet would carry her. She ran past every white picket fence and rosebush and neatly trimmed tree, and not a single person was outside of their house for her to run up to and ask for help. Instead of stopping, Arya kept running until it felt like her lungs would burst inside of her chest.

 

She wasn’t sure if the sick psycho was following her, and in all honesty, Arya was too scared to look back and see if he was right there behind her on her heels. If she stopped to look back, he could catch her, and she would be another victim on the six o’clock news. She would never make it to Uncle Brynden’s house, and she would never make it home. Her messenger bag was also heavy, and the weight of it was slowing her down. Arya would have torn it off and thrown it, but then it would be a piece of evidence for him to follow, a trial leading straight to her for him to find.

 

Arya cut a corner around a fence, and then quickly looked back to peek down the sidewalk. She saw nothing and no one, though, and she certainly didn’t see him. Sighing with relief, Arya reached into her pocket and grabbed for her phone. She had to call Jon immediately and tell him to come back.

 

As Arya fumbled with pulling her phone out of her pocket, a hand covered her mouth and nose from behind as another arm snaked around her body and held her with an iron tight grip. There was a piece of cloth or cotton between her face and the hand, and when Arya breathed, everything became foggy and blurry. Her eyes began to shut on her, drooping to a close.

 

Before she knew it, everything went black.

 

 


	71. Skin to Bone

_* * *_

 

As consciousness slowly came back to her, it took Arya some time to realize that the transition wasn’t just part of a dream. Her mind was sluggish, unaware, and confused, and her body was heavy and unwilling to move at first. She opened and closed her eyes many times to the darkness before she realized that she was awake and no longer asleep. Arya then wondered why she had fallen asleep, and when she moved to get up, she found her wrists bound behind her back, her ankles bound together, and that she wasn’t lying in a bed but in a box that was lined on the bottom with something soft to make it feel like a bed. She felt the wall to her back with her hands, and then she kicked her feet to feel it in front of her, too. Panic set in and sent her heart rate to flutter wildly inside of her chest, and she tried to turn herself onto her back from her side, though it didn’t quite work.

 

With her hands tied behind her back, the position would have been too awkward to do, so Arya turned her head to look up. She could see nothing but darkness above her and around her, and not a crack of light peered through the box. Arya couldn’t see an opening anywhere in the thing. _I’m blind_ , she thought with terror. _I can’t see a thing_. When she opened her mouth to speak, her eyes grew wide with the realization that she was also gagged. She didn’t think about it at first. Her mind was so groggy still that she was having a hard time piecing it all together, but her mouth was chaffed at the corners because of the gag and her wrists were sore from the bonds wrapped tightly around them. Arya tried to remember how she had gotten here, and everything settled into her brain at once.

 

She had been sitting on the bench outside of the bus station after Jon had driven off, waiting for her bus to come along. Instead of catching her bus, though, Arya had been caught. _Ramsay Bolton_ , she remembered, thinking of all the things he had been arrested for and put away in prison for, and now he was out on the loose. He had captured her, but why? Did he need a reason? Ramsay Bolton was a sick psycho, and he didn’t need a reason to do what he did. Despite her initial panic, though, Arya’s heart rate settled down. She could breathe, so she knew she wasn’t buried alive. Besides, that wasn’t Ramsay’s thing.

 

He was a skinner, a flayer, and a torturer. He had played with his victims before he murdered them, so the tiniest part of Arya’s brain tried to latch itself onto that thought for survival. He hadn’t hurt her yet as far as she could tell, but there was a fine sensation of burning in her neck. It also hurt with a deep, dull ache. Arya didn’t know if there was anything wrong with her neck. She couldn’t see it without a mirror, and she couldn’t touch it, so right now, she had no time to worry about it. Ramsay wouldn’t kill her anytime soon as far as she knew, so she had time to formulate a plan and get out of there. The only problem was she was in a box, and on top of that, she was tied up.

 

 _Get out of the box_ , Arya thought firmly to herself.

 

Arya turned herself onto her back with much effort in the small and enclosed space, but she managed it in the end. Her hands were twisted awkwardly behind her, and so it hurt to lie at such an angle, but Arya would grit and bear it for now. She raised her knees by bending them to test the height of the box. There wasn’t enough room for her to kick it, which would have been hard with her ankles tied together, but she could knock both of her knees into the lid and try to dislodge it. Arya flattened her legs, giving her knees just the slightest arch, and forced them upwards against the box with as much strength as she could put behind the motion.

 

The lid shook, and a crack of light became visible to her for just a moment. It was a faded light as if coming from a distance, but Arya could see it and it gave her hope. She arched her knees again, and then shoved them upwards against the box’s lid a second time. The impact stung her kneecaps, but it was worth it. She could see beyond the box to the other side, getting a glimpse of the room. The room was dark, but her eyes were adjusted to the dark already, so the room was easy to see despite its lack of lighting. It looked like the walls of a normal house, though Arya had no idea where the house was located. If it was in the city, then she would be close to other people. If she could get out of this box, then she could escape and find someone to help her get home.

 

Arya slammed her knees against the lid a third time, causing a loud splintering crack to resonate through the air. She froze, and her heart froze with it. Was he here? Was he nearby? Did he happen to hear that noise? From what she could tell, she was in some kind of a trunk. It was held shut by only a latch with a hanging lock, or she wouldn’t have been able to make such a big opening when she kicked at the lid. One lock, and that was it. She could get out of it. She could break it and get free. Escape would be easy as long as he wasn’t home to hear that noise.

 

Instead of risking stillness any further, Arya arched her legs for a fourth time and prepared to slam her knees into the lid of the box once more. However, she heard other sounds echoing from somewhere within the house, and she froze yet again. Arya heard the noise of a nearby door as it was opened up and then the click of a light switch as it was flicked on, which caused sudden beams of light to peer in through the box at various cracks. Then, she heard the footsteps drawing closer to the trunk. Suddenly, someone was fumbling with the lock on the box, and Arya stared at the direction of the latch, afraid of what she might see when it was lifted up at last.

 

The lid flew up in one swift motion, and there knelt the same man from earlier. He looked down at her with an upset expression upon his face. He took in the sight of her gag, and then he looked down at the binding on her ankles. His hands grabbed at her legs to check the fastenings and make sure they were still tight. Her skin crawled at the contact, and she jolted even worse when he grabbed her by her side and rolled her over to check the bindings on her wrists behind her as well. Every touch of his hands made her skin want to crawl right off of her body.

 

 _The Skinner_ , Arya thought, trembling at the name as it filtered through her head. He had earned the nickname because of his unnatural penchant to skin people alive. It was a terrifying thought being inside of a house with him. Even worse was the thought of being locked inside of trunk because of him, not knowing if she was even going to get out of it in one piece.

 

The frantic motions of his hands slowed down once he noticed she was still tied up to his satisfaction, and he rolled her onto her back again. Arya stared straight at him without looking away, thinking it best not to show fear. If she looked away from him, it would only incite him towards anger or interest. She thought she had read that somewhere about psychopaths before. They liked to stare, and it was best not to give them a reaction to their stare.

 

He didn’t seem to have a reaction as she stared back at him. Arya memorized as much about his face as she could, having not remembered it outside of seeing him at the bus station. He wasn’t that big of a man. In fact, he was sort of on the small side. He had a sharp, angular face with very pale skin and bright, cold blue eyes. There was no emotion in his eyes, no feeling at all. It was like looking into a mirror that held no reflection, Arya thought. His hair was black and cut short. His lips were thin and bloodless.

 

“You interrupted my dinner,” he said, and it was as if he was talking to naughty child who just threw her toy across the room and not a girl he had kidnapped and locked up in a box in his house.

 

Did he expect her to apologize with a gag in her mouth? Arya just stared back at his face, trying her hardest not to narrow her gaze at him. Even if there wasn’t something preventing her from talking, she wouldn’t apologize to the creep in a million years. If he didn’t want her interrupting his dinner, then he shouldn’t have locked her up in a goddamn box. Despite her current situation, it was hard to feel fear at the moment. There was nothing at all frightening about him, but Arya knew it was not his appearances she ought to be frightened about—it was what he could do to her.

 

“Oh, right,” Ramsay said next, and he reached for her face to grab her chin with forceful fingers. He turned her head to face him fully, raising his eyebrows. “Bit of a one way conversation, isn’t it?” he asked. “With that gag in your mouth. Suits you, though. I think women look better with gags in their mouths.” Ramsay then leaned in close to Arya, and he nodded his head with a slow precision as his crazy eyes bored into hers. “It stops a lot of unnecessary talking,” he informed her.

 

Arya wanted to spit in his face, and then she wanted to kick him in his balls. If she ever got out of here, she would stab him multiple times in the back with a rusted kitchen knife. Arya never thought of herself as a killer, but if someone was going to threaten her life by locking her up in a box, then they had earned whatever was coming to them.

 

“Maybe I ought to take that gag out of your mouth?” Ramsay suggested, and she felt his fingers slide to the side of her face with a cold, wormy like slither. Arya tensed up beneath it, and he must have noticed her reaction because he froze for a moment. His fingers grasped her gag next, and he tore it from her face. It hurt. The tied cloth snapped only because of the pressure, and Arya wondered if he had ripped it off on purpose.

 

He had _wanted_ to hurt her.

 

Arya’s first instinct was to scream, but something held her back from doing it. Just because someone heard a scream didn’t mean they would call the police, and Ramsay would just immediately shut her up again after one scream with a new gag, anyway. Someone might not even hear her at all, and then she would have just pissed off a serial killer. Maybe he might even hurt her to teach her a lesson. It was futile, giving it one shot like that. Besides, he had taken the gag off and he was giving her a small bit of freedom. Arya was going to use it to her advantage. She had to look for an opening, not just act without thinking first.

 

 _Be smart_ , she thought to herself. _Be strong_. _Don’t panic_.

 

Ramsay grinned down at her, and he patted her cheek. “You didn’t scream,” he said happily, and he leaned closer to Arya again, still grinning. “They always scream when I do that,” he told her in a lower voice. “I can tell you’re a smart one, though. I like that.”

 

Arya opened her mouth to speak, even though the corners of her lips were sore and crusted from the gag. She thought about asking him a question while he was happy. He might be keener to answer her honestly if he was in a good mood. It was worth a shot, anyway.

 

“What are you going to do to me?” Arya asked, finding her voice hoarse. How long had she been out? It couldn’t have been that long, could it? Had her family noticed she’d been missing yet? Was Uncle Brynden looking for her? Was Jon, Dad, or Mum looking for her? _Gendry_ , Arya thought with an ache in her heart, _will I ever see you again?_

 

Ramsay stared down at her for a long moment without saying anything. The expression on his face didn’t change, though. Arya wondered if it ever changed. He looked dead in the face like nothing could move him. She doubted anything did.

 

“You’re not my play toy,” Ramsay told her slowly, and Arya couldn’t help but feel a sudden flood of relief at his admission. “Somebody else wants you,” he added, and the relief began to ebb away. “Somebody very important, so if you’re good, we can make this go smooth without any hiccups. You play nice, I play nice, and we play nice together.”

 

“It’s hard to place nice,” Arya ground out between her teeth, “in a box.”

 

Ramsay looked around at the box, surveying it with interest. “Well,” he said, sounding almost bored, “I didn’t have anywhere else to put you.”

 

“Can I stand up?” Arya asked, still forcing the words out as calmly as possible. Maybe he would let her come out of the box if she asked him. Arya didn’t want to stay locked up in a box any longer, and maybe he wouldn’t insist she had to go back into it once she came out of it. Maybe he had only put her there at first because he couldn’t keep an eye on her the whole time.

 

Ramsay lifted his eyes to her, an inquisitive look on his face. “So you can try to run off?” he asked her, though he didn’t look threatened by the possibility. He probably thought he could catch her before she even made it three feet away from him.

 

“I didn’t say you had to untie me,” Arya told him in a tight voice, feeling the bile rise up in her throat just from saying it. She didn’t want to play nice with this creep, but it wasn’t like she had much of a choice if she wanted to get out of this alive and unhurt. She would have to play nice for now. It was her only way out of here.

 

Ramsay seemed to be considering her request, though. His brow furrowed and his lips pursed, and finally, he shrugged his shoulders.

 

“All right,” he agreed, and he reached into the box to slide his arms underneath her body and lift her out of it. Ramsay immediately put her down onto her feet, letting go of her, but Arya’s legs were weak suddenly with standing. They ended up collapsing beneath her. She fell to the floor without any palms to break her fall, her hands still tied behind her. The impact of the fall hurt, but Ramsay just laughed at her like it was amusing. “That’s what happens sometimes,” Ramsay said, “when you wake up from anesthesia. I used a little chloroform to get you still, so I could pump your neck full of M99. Chloroform doesn’t knock a person out for a long time. Only a few seconds. I learned that, much to my displeasure, the first time I used it. Movies make it look so easy . . . ”

 

Arya couldn’t push herself to her feet. She could only roll over onto her back and stare up at the ceiling. Ramsay walked up to her, his shrouded silhouette framed in the light from above, making him look like a dark specter above her, grinning in its shadow. Arya knew she should feel fear. Any sensible girl would feel fear, but Arya wasn’t going to let herself be afraid of this man. He already said he wasn’t going to hurt her. She wasn’t his to hurt. Arya didn’t know who wanted her, or why they wanted her, but they couldn’t have been worse than Ramsay Bolton.

 

As he looked down at her, Ramsay cocked his head to the side. “Tell me, Sansa, are you afraid of me?”

 

 _Sansa?_ Arya thought in confusion. She almost opened her mouth to ask him what the hell he meant by calling her Sansa, but then she remembered she had given him that name at the bus station, and now she was in his captivity. It struck her, then, that Ramsay hadn’t meant to capture her.

 

He had meant to capture Sansa.

 

Arya’s thoughts were running away from her. What had Sansa gotten involved in that someone sent a serial killer to kidnap her for them? Nothing was different about Sansa lately. She was still her same old self. The only thing new about Sansa was a sudden openness that hadn’t been there for a long time ever since she had started dating Joffrey, and then she was seeing Sandor. But Sansa had been seeing Sandor for months now. Half a year, if Arya remembered correctly. Sandor was normal guy. He joined her camp as a youth counselor, for Christ’s sake.

 

What the hell did a serial killer want with Sansa?

 

Arya’s thoughts veered in another direction, though. As soon as the other person who wanted her came by to get her, they would see she wasn’t her sister, and then they wouldn’t want her anymore. They would tell Ramsay to get rid of her or they would tell him he could have her, and then he could do to her whatever he wanted from the moment he had snatched her up off the streets.

 

Her panic was back. Her fear was back. Arya wasn’t the person they wanted to have in their possession, and they weren’t going to keep her safe the moment they found that out.

 

“My family _will_ find me,” Arya hissed at him, lifting her head from the floor. She felt all of the anger and frustration within her bubbling up to the surface. “They’re looking for me right now, and you’ll be sorry you _ever_ did this.”

 

Ramsay crouched down beside her, folding his hands in front of himself. “No,” he said, shaking his head, “they won’t find you. They don’t even know you’re missing. Your family thinks you went to your uncle’s for the holidays, and your uncle, well . . . I took care of that.”

 

Arya felt her lip trembling, even though she cursed at herself internally for it. “What did you _do_ to my uncle?” she demanded angrily.

 

“Oh, I didn’t kill him,” Ramsay assured her, “but don’t worry. He won’t be interrupting our little interlude together.” Ramsay reached out and patted her cheek again, and Arya squeezed her eyes shut at the touch of his cold and clammy hand against her face.

 

When he pulled his hand away, she opened her eyes again.

 

“They’ll realize I’m gone,” she insisted. “They’ll call my phone, and when I don’t answer and they can’t get a hold of me, they’ll come looking for me.”

 

Ramsay smiled at her, then, like her hopefulness amused him to no end. Instead of being angry about it, he was tickled, and he reached into his pocket to fish something out of it. “I wouldn’t count on that either,” he said slowly, retrieving a black device from his pants pocket.

 

It was her phone.

 

The pit of Arya’s stomach went cold.

 

“See,” Ramsay told her, “whenever they call you, I just have to respond with a text. I checked your phone. You text a lot, so it won’t be out of character for you to text instead of talk. Besides, you seemed pretty pissed off about being sent to your uncle’s house for the holidays. There’s a series of texts between you and some boy named ‘Gendry’ to strongly suggest that. As a matter of fact, he sent a message a few minutes ago . . . ”

 

Ramsay started to tinker with her phone, swiping his finger across the screen to open it up. Arya wished she had put a password on her phone, but it was too late now for that sort of wishful thinking.

 

Ramsay pulled up the latest text message from Gendry, and then he held the phone up to Arya’s face for her to read it. It read, “ _Hey are u at uncle b’s yet?_ ” Arya’s eyes watered as her eyes passed over the text, and Ramsay pulled the phone away from her. She had taken a second to read the timestamp in the corner, too, though. It was evening, so she had been gone since morning.

 

“What should I say to him?” Ramsay asked, a pondering look overcoming his face. “Oh, I know.” He began to type up a text message. If he was smart enough to read them, then he would be smart enough to try and make himself sound like Arya. The back of her eyes stung, and her vision grew a little blurry, but Arya pushed away the tears by taking a deep breath.

 

She would get through this. She would get out. It became a mantra in her head. She just had to keep telling herself that, and never let herself think otherwise. _You’ll get out_ , Arya said to herself. _You’ll escape. You’re smarter than him. Don’t let him unnerve you._ _You’ll get out._

 

“‘Yeah,’” Ramsay said, reading aloud what he was typing with a funny voice, “‘I’m there. This sucks. Mum and Dad suck.’ Hm, that sounds sufficient, doesn’t it?”

 

Arya said nothing.

 

Ramsay must have sent the text because he put the phone away after that. He folded his hands in front of himself again. He was quiet for some time as he crouched there beside her, staring at her, and Arya wondered if he had a weapon on him. Did he just walk around with a knife in his pocket, too? She would have to watch him and see. If he carried a weapon on him, then maybe one day she could get close enough to snatch it.

 

If he ever untied her hands, of course.

 

“I wonder what your boy toy would think,” Ramsay began slowly, “of you having another boy on the side. Aren’t you a little young to be playing the field like that?”

 

Arya didn’t know what to say. Everything was so strange and confusing, but he thought she was Sansa. He obviously also thought she was seeing Gendry and Sandor at the same time, and that caused her to narrow her eyes as she turned her head to look at Ramsay.

 

Sansa was the one seeing Sandor. Sansa was the one they were after, and why did Ramsay even care what Sandor thought?

 

“Do you know him?” Arya suddenly asked, unable to stop the question from leaving her mouth.

 

Ramsay narrowed his eyes as well. “Know who? Your boyfriend?”

 

Arya nodded her head, going along with it. “Yes,” she said. It took every ounce of her energy to say his name, but it came out through gritted teeth. “Sandor.”

 

Ramsay appeared to be thoughtful as he tilted his head to the side. “No, I don’t know him,” he said flippantly. “Never met him, but the boss knows him, and the boss isn’t very happy with him either, so you can just thank him for putting you into this situation. Needless to say, you’ll probably break up after this.”

 

He was trying to be funny, but Arya didn’t find it very funny.

 

“What did he do?” she asked quietly, trying to sound unnerved by his news. He thought he was talking about her boyfriend, and she didn’t want to give him a reason to think otherwise right now. Arya hadn’t even had a chance to think of a way out of this situation, and until she got one, she was going to play along with his ignorance.

 

“Look,” Ramsay said, suddenly losing his chipper tone. “I don’t want to chitchat. I have better things to do. So, how about we go over the rules real quick that way you have an understanding of how things are going to work around here? As of right now, you’re allowed to do four things. You can eat, drink, shit, and piss. That’s it. Now if you’re good, you’ll be allowed privileges. Those privileges include walking, moving, being gag-free, and maybe even taking baths. I’ll even tie your hands in front of you so you can eat,” he added, speaking of it like it was the kindest thing in the world that one human being could do for another person.

 

Ramsay leaned in close again, though, and his tone grew harsher. “But if you try anything stupid, anything at all, I’ll start by taking privileges away. One by one, they’ll be stripped from you. And if you do anything _really_ stupid, like trying to attack me or hurt me, you won’t succeed, and then I’ll strip off a little bit of your flesh as punishment whether the boss likes it or not.” His cold, dead eyes stared hers down, unflinching. “Do you understand?” he asked.

 

Arya took a deep breath to calm herself, though it didn’t help. Despite Ramsay’s seemingly harmless appearance, there was a spark of crazy in his eyes. She knew she couldn’t piss him off. _Just go with it, Arya_ , she whispered to herself. She could find a way through it. She had always been as smart as a whip. Everyone always said that about her, and what did they say about Ramsay?

 

 _He’s a psychopath_ , Arya thought.

 

He might have been smart, too, but if there was one thing that Arya knew about serial killers, it was that their urges could overrun their intelligence. How else did they get caught all the time? If they were so damn smart, they wouldn’t get caught at all. They’d glide through life like a shadow, slipping like sand through everyone’s fingers. But Ramsay had already been caught once before.

 

Arya might have only been a girl, just a teenager still going to school, but that didn’t mean she was stupid. She was far from it. With this in mind, she became a little bit stronger, and Arya lifted her chin to nod her head at him.

 

“I understand,” she said.

 

Ramsay seemed to be looking her over after that. Arya didn’t know what he was thinking, but then he stood up. Ramsay bent over, and he snatched her arm to pull her to her feet. Arya tried to balance herself as best as possible, her legs still feeling somewhat wobbly beneath her, but Ramsay’s hand was on her shoulder, helping to hold her up.

 

 _Not out of the goodness of his heart_ , Arya thought grimly. He was under orders not to harm her. Even though he had threatened it, she wondered if he would really do it. Arya didn’t want to find out, though.

 

She had to get out of this situation before whoever wanted her came to claim her and discovered she wasn’t her sister.

 

Arya then saw out of the corner of her eyes as Ramsay pulled something else out of his pocket. He moved to stand behind her, and she felt him cutting the cords on her wrists. _So_ , she thought, _he does carry a knife on him_. She filed that thought away in the back of her head. Ramsay came around her and brought her wrists together in the front, taking out a new cord from his pocket and retying her hands. He created a strange loop Arya had never seen before, which tied her wrists separately with a cord hanging between them to hold them together. It was only a few inches in length, but it allowed for so much more movement that she couldn’t have accomplished with the usual type of knot.

 

Ramsay let go of her hands, but Arya still held them up. She raised her eyes from her hands to see him looking dead at her. His expression, yet again, was unreadable.

 

“Come on,” Ramsay said. “It’s time to eat.”

 

 


	72. As Good a Place to Fall as Any

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** At the end of this chapter, I’ve included a list of songs so far whose lyrics inspired the chapter names, covering Chapter 63 through Chapter 72!

_* * *_

 

“You do know that next week is my birthday, don’t you?” Sansa asked off to his right, and Sandor looked over at her.

 

Sansa was sitting in his lap, using both hands to delicately hold one of the many small cut squares of blueberry muffin cake she had just finished baking. After she had spoken her question, she took a small bite out of the cake. There was a crumb sitting at the corner of her mouth, and Sandor’s eyes fell down to stare at it. Sansa glanced down at herself, realizing she was unable to see it a little too late, and instead of wiping it away, she snaked out her tongue to lick it up.

 

Sandor kept staring, especially after that.

 

“Stop it,” Sansa said, laughing softly as she reached out with one of her hands to pop him on the chest. Sandor lifted his eyes at that, narrowing them at her.

 

“I can stare at you if I want to,” he told her, his voice serious and low, and Sansa stilled in his lap as she stared back at him. Her eyes darted up and down from his face to his chest and back, and she slowly finished chewing what was in her mouth. When she was done, Sandor saw the movement of Sansa’s throat as she swallowed it down. Regardless of the cake in her hands, there was something very erotic in the motion, and Sandor’s thoughts veered into unsafe territory. He wanted to lean forward and kiss her throat, but Sansa held out the small piece of blueberry cake in her hands. She held it up to his mouth, and Sandor glanced down at it in silence.

 

As he raised his eyes back to hers, he leaned forward and opened his mouth just enough to take a bite of it. He could have sworn she started breathing deeper, and her lips parted just slightly as she watched him. It wasn’t just a one-way street. Sansa squirmed in his lap, and one of Sandor’s hands rested itself on her leg near her knee and slowly slid up to her thigh, causing her to still again. She brought what was left of the cake in her hands to her mouth, taking just a small nibble out of it, which left only a small portion. Sansa looked like she wasn’t going to share anymore, so Sandor reached out with his other hand and grasped her wrist with a gentle hold. Sansa froze all over her body, staring at him, as he guided her hand towards his mouth.

 

He took the last bit of the cake from her hand, closing his lips around her fingers. Sansa exhaled a heavy breath, trembling as he pulled back from her fingers with a slow motion. Their eyes were locked for the longest moment, and Sandor chewed the cake and swallowed it before Sansa realized she still had some in her mouth. She blushed a pretty shade of pink and turned her head down to the side to finish it, swallowing the last of the cake. Her shyness, her pink tinged cheeks, and the movements of her throat all drew him to her. Sansa’s shyness was sexy to him, and it only made him want her more. Sandor took a hold of her chin, and he stroked his thumb along the soft ridge of her jaw. It caused Sansa to lift her head a little bit, and then Sandor gently urged her to face him again.

 

Sansa had said something about her birthday before all this playfulness began, but Sandor wasn’t paying attention to that news right now. He was only paying attention to her and how good she looked today and how she was sitting in his lap right where he wanted her, and he thought he should use the moment to his advantage. Sandor’s hand slid behind her neck, underneath her long hair, and he pulled her towards him until their lips pressed softly together. Sansa, sitting in his lap, was actually a bit taller than him because of her position, and she had to tilt her head downwards as he tilted his up.

 

Their slow and languorous movements at first remained rather calm and chaste. When Sansa opened her mouth, Sandor took the opportunity to deepen the kiss, and she moaned somewhere in the back of her throat so soft that he barely heard it. She rested her hands on his shoulders, turning her body to face him more, but she was sitting sideways on his lap, so she could only turn so far. Sandor wanted to feel her closer than this, and so he wrapped an arm around her body with the one nearer to her back. Tightening his grip, he pulled Sansa towards him, and her hands grasped harder on his shoulders as she tried to maintain her balance, but she didn’t seem to understand what he wanted her to do.

 

Well, Sandor thought, he could just tell her.

 

He pulled his mouth away from hers, just a fraction of space left between them, but he wanted to kiss her so hard all over again that he had to refrain himself with what little self-control he had to spare.

 

“Straddle my lap,” he murmured against her lips, and Sansa held her breath for a few seconds before exhaling it. Her hot breath washing over his chin caused Sandor to reach out with his teeth and bite gently onto her bottom lip the way he had seen her to do herself a million times before. A sudden pleasurable noise echoed from within Sansa’s mouth, and she gripped his shoulders to use them for leverage as she quickly rearranged herself in his lap. Her eagerness to comply made Sandor think he ought to order her around in these situations more often. She obviously liked it when he told her what to do, and Sansa was young and inexperienced as well, and there was something intensely erotic about being her guide. He never thought he was find such a circumstance arousing, but there it was, and it was very arousing.

 

Sansa had never talked about anything of her sexual life before him, and she had never outright admitted to being a virgin, but Sandor had always known. He knew through the way she acted and carried herself that she had never gone that far before. There were woman who held off sexual advances because they didn’t want to go that far, and then there was Sansa, who held them off because she had never gone that far. While the thought used to scare him because he had never been with a virgin his whole life, it had become something of a fantasy as of late. In his best efforts to ease off the tension in his mind because he couldn’t drink unless he wanted to upset Sansa, Sandor had resorted to the next best thing he could think of doing—and it involved his hand and his imagination.

 

He imagined different things each time, and he always imagined Sansa. It was growing to a point where it was taking over his waking thoughts now, and he couldn’t look at her without thinking about all of the things he wanted to do to her. Like earlier, when Sansa had decided she wanted to bake a blueberry muffin cake in his apartment today, she insisted that he participate and learn how to cook something. Sandor had protested at first, but then he caved in because he realized cooking and preparing to cook was a fun process to watch once she got started with it. It involved Sansa getting her hands dirty and bending over a lot. His protests had dissipated after that, and he even helped her when she asked for his assistance.

 

As Sansa had worked on mixing all of the ingredients on his counter, Sandor had thought constantly about pushing her down onto it and getting her out of those jeans. As good as he was sure the cake would taste, he would much rather have her instead. They could make an even bigger mess than before, and he wouldn’t care at all. Sandor didn’t try to act on his urges, though, because the last few times he had tried to act on them, Sansa had stopped him each and every time. Sandor had just stared at her instead, imagining all of things he wanted to do. Reality spliced with fantasy had left him hot and bothered and with no outlets to release the tension.

 

With her sitting proper in his lap like this, Sandor ran his hands over her thighs and up to her hips. His hands gripped her firmly through her jeans, and Sansa began to roll her hips against him with slow movements. She knew exactly how to move herself, even if she had never done it before. Sex was purely instinctual. Sansa knew what to do, virgin or not, and she knew how to do it. She could learn how to do it better, and she could learn how to improve the technique, but none of that actually mattered to Sandor. He was a hundred times more undone by the natural sway of her body than the conventional and nearly mechanical way of almost every other woman before, excluding maybe two or three who might have genuinely gotten into it. He had used women for his own ends his whole life, but then again, many of them had used him for theirs, too. There had been no passion to it. It was all mechanical fucking in hopes for a climax.

 

Sansa was different, though. Sandor was attracted to her inside and out. He loved everything about her. She had gotten close to him in a way that no other person ever had done, and even her opinion could sway him. If she didn’t want him drinking, then he would try his hardest not to drink. It was a constant battle, but Sandor was trying. Trying was better than putting no effort into it at all. She had that power over him, though. Sansa didn’t even realize it, as innocent as she was, but she had control over him. Whatever she wanted of him, all she had to do was ask and he would give it. All that he required from her in return was for her to not turn away from him—and to acknowledge him.

 

However, Sansa never asked of anything. As she sat there in his lap, rolling her hips against him as he gripped onto them, she didn’t utter a word, but she breathed hard through her lips and her hands ran over his chest. They fell to the hem of his shirt, and she pushed her way underneath the fabric to touch his bare skin with her fingers and palms. Sandor reached forward once to kiss her, and Sansa returned the kiss, but when she pulled away abruptly, her hands flattened themselves against his chest and shoved him back against the counter. His eyes went wide for just a second or two, shocked by her sudden aggression. The shyness was already back in her face, though, and even Sansa looked surprised by what she had just done.

 

Slowly, she pulled her hands out from underneath his shirt. They retracted away from him, but Sandor glanced down. Her fingers curled under the hem of her sweater, and Sansa pulled it over her head. Underneath it, she wore a thin t-shirt. She let go of her sweater, letting it fall to the floor. Sandor thought that was it. Sansa might have taken off her sweater, but it didn’t mean she was going to take off anything else. He leaned forward again, but she stopped him with the tips of her fingers pressed to his chest. With a gentle motion, Sansa pushed him back again. Sandor allowed his back to lean against the counter behind him, even though it wasn’t the most comfortable position in the world with them sitting on a stool. Right now, he could hardly care.

 

Sandor responded to her by gripping her hips tighter, and then kneading them with his palms. Sansa’s mouth fell open, and he wanted to bite down on her lip again. She reached for the hem of her shirt, and Sandor froze as Sansa slowly pulled it over her head and let that, too, fall to the floor.

 

She was wearing a light green bra underneath. Nothing fancy, just a simple bra. Sandor stared at her bare skin above and below it, and he looked up at Sansa’s face to see her gauging his reaction. He pushed himself off of the counter, sliding his hand behind her neck again and holding her there, as his other hand grasped her naked side. Sandor rose up to meet her, pulling her down at the same time to crush his lips to hers in a hungry kiss. Sansa made a soft noise against his mouth, and she arched her chest onto his while his hand roamed up her side and over to her back. He swept his tongue just so against hers, drawn into the heat between their mouths, and Sansa shivered in his arms. She rocked her hips, and Sandor pulled away from her mouth to kiss his way down her neck as she arched that for him as well.

 

He kissed Sansa’s neck with the same firm tenderness he used on her lips, occasionally flicking out his tongue to taste her skin or dragging his teeth along her flesh. Sandor kissed his way to her collarbone, which he bit lightly once he reached it, and Sansa ground her hips down on him. He made his way down to the curve of her breasts just above her bra, heaving over with each deep breath she inhaled into her lungs. She was beautiful in every way, and he wanted her in every way. Sansa was letting him touch her, and Sandor could only think that her inhibitions were gone at last. He scraped his teeth along the top of her breast, and Sansa moaned deep in her throat, a guttural sound he had never heard out of her before. Everything with her so far had been soft and sweet, but everything in that sound was pure ache and longing.

 

Sandor positioned his head between her breasts, licking the indention in the middle. He pressed both of his hands against her lower back now, and he held her body tight to him. If Sansa arched herself any further, she might fall right out of his lap.

 

“Touch me,” Sansa suddenly whispered, and she tried to right herself in his lap. Sandor had to pull back from her to give her room to do it, but she sat straight up in front of him and stared down at Sandor with half-lidded eyes and an open mouth. “Touch me, please,” she begged in her breathless voice, and she only had to do it once.

 

Sandor dropped his gaze down to her pants. He quickly reached down between them, trying not to look as eager as a fucking virginal teenage boy, popping open the button on her jeans and fumbling with the zipper. He had to spread his own legs to give himself some room to slide his hand down behind the folds of her jeans, but he only got his fingers an inch or two. It was an awkward position on the stool, so he leaned close to her ear, and said, “Turn around, and spread your legs.”

 

Sansa quickly nodded her head and complied. Temporarily, she crawled off of him, but Sandor wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her back into his lap once her back was facing him. In fact, he had practically hoisted her up in the process, inciting a gasp out from between her lips. He thought it was amusing and as cute as hell coming from Sansa. Sandor knew it meant she liked it. Every gasp like that from her lips meant she liked whatever he had done to cause it. Those little noises and dead giveaways only served to turn him on further.

 

Once she was settled in his lap again with her back to his chest, Sansa leaned into him and opened her legs by placing them on either side of his and spreading them wider. She hooked her feet around his ankles, which were resting on the bottom rungs of the stool, to help her hold them open with ease. As soon as she had wiggled herself into place, Sandor brought his hand back around to the front of her body, caressing his fingers slowly against her bare stomach. Sansa’s breath deepened, and she arched her back. Sandor didn’t want to rush it now that he had a better angle. He wanted it to be slow and torturous. After all the times that she had made him suffer, he was going to make her beg for it before he gave her what she wanted from him.

 

Sandor trailed his hand a little lower on her tummy, the tips of his fingers just barely brushing underneath the open waistband of her jeans. They grazed the waistband of Sansa’s panties, but he didn’t feel any elastic, only soft cloth, and he wondered what type of panties she was wearing. He couldn’t see them from here, but he supposed sight was secondary to touch right now. Sandor wanted to touch more than he wanted to look, so ever so slowly, he dipped his fingers past the waistband of her panties right beside her hip.

 

His fingers touched a nerve, a really sensitive spot on her right side, and Sansa jolted beneath his hand. He even felt the nerve jump below her skin. She leaned a little to the left as if to give him better access. She must have liked it, Sandor thought, so he let his fingers graze the spot again, and Sansa shuddered beneath him as she made a strangled noise in the back of her throat. She reached around with her arm to hold the back of his neck with her hand, leaning into him.

 

“Please,” Sansa begged again quietly. “Please, touch me, Sandor . . . ”

 

His fingers curled around the side of her panties, gripping it between his fist. Sansa breathed hard in reaction, and then he let it go, flattening his hand against her skin to feel each breath. He waited a moment before he slid his hand around to the front of her jeans, and dipped it low between denim and cotton to feel the heat radiating off of her body—when a knock came at the door.

 

Sandor turned his head around, pulling his hand out of her pants to narrow his eyes at the door. He didn’t remember inviting anyone over today, and he didn’t remember ordering anything for them to eat either.

 

“Why’d you stop?” Sansa asked breathlessly, and Sandor wanted to continue, but that knock had distracted him.

 

“Someone’s at the door,” he said. “You didn’t hear that knock?”

 

“Ignore them,” she whispered. “They’ll go away.”

 

Whoever it was, though, they banged on the door even louder the second time. Sandor sighed in irritation, and he heard an angry, wordless rumble come from Sansa’s throat. It was sexy, and he wanted to yell ‘shove off’ to whoever was standing on the other side of the door, but Sandor didn’t get a chance to because the moment he thought about it, the front door to his apartment flew open.

 

“Hey, Sandor!” a voice called from the doorway. “I brought—”

 

He felt Sansa tense up immediately in his arms, and she unhooked her legs from his ankles and quickly slid off his lap and down out of sight on the floor. It confused Sandor to no end until he realized she was shirtless and had been sitting in his lap. It was an awkward position to be caught in, he didn’t doubt, and it wasn’t as awkward for him because he was fully clothed. Sandor turned around on the stool to catch a glimpse of the intruder.

 

It was Loras, looking every bit as much as shocked as Sansa had looked once she ducked to the floor to hide. Luckily, there was a whole kitchen counter between them and Loras, and Sandor could hear Sansa struggling to get her shirt back over her head.

 

“Am I interrupting something?” Loras asked slowly, standing there with two bags in his hands.

 

Even though he was interrupting something, Sandor was trying to stay on good terms with Loras. He didn’t want to snap at the guy in spite of the circumstances. Apparently, Sandor hadn’t locked the apartment door when he thought he had locked it earlier. In the past Loras had always had a free invitation into Sandor’s home, and with this friendship they were trying to build back up again, Loras obviously was reverting back to old habits.

 

“Sort of,” Sandor answered, thinking this whole thing had to have been much more awkward for Sansa. It was a good thing Loras was gay. Sansa’s half-naked state was just a surprise for him and not something to ogle over seeing.

 

“I’m _really_ sorry,” Loras said. “Seriously, I didn’t know—”

 

“It’s fine, Loras,” Sansa suddenly said from Sandor’s left. He looked over to see she had pulled her shirt and sweater on again, and she was standing up beside him behind the counter, running a hand nervously through her hair.

 

Loras put down the bags he was holding and held up his hands. “I wasn’t looking—” he began, but Sansa actually laughed and cut him off.

 

“Loras, I’m a _girl_ ,” she said. “Of course, you weren’t looking.”

 

“Right,” Loras said in a chipper voice. “Good. Anyway, I brought over some drinks—”

 

Sandor got a tight-lipped look on his face. “Loras, I said I don’t drink—”

 

“No, no, no,” Loras said quickly, shaking his head. “Not _that_ kind of drink. I know you don’t drink anymore. You said no more alcohol. I got it. This isn’t alcohol. This is, like, vintage cream soda from the sixties, and it’s really good. They’ve got vanilla cream and orange cream and strawberry cream—”

 

“Ooh, can I try some?” Sansa asked. She must have already forgotten all about her embarrassment just moments ago.

 

“Sure, come here,” Loras said, and he bent over one of the bags and pulled out a six pack and genuine vintage cream sodas in glass bottles. Sandor had to hand it to him. That boy could anything if he set his mind to it. As Sansa ambled across the living room towards Loras, Sandor pushed himself off of the stool in his kitchen. The awkwardness of the situation seemed to be gone. To be honest, Sandor was bit pissed off about it, but that didn’t mean he and Sansa couldn’t try again later. Preferably at night, next time. With the doors locked.

 

He walked into the living room and took a seat on the couch as Sansa accepted one of the bottles from Loras. She took it to the kitchen to prepare a glass of ice for the soda. Meanwhile, Loras handed one to Sandor. Sandor took it, popped it open, and drank it without ice. He didn’t feel like going back into the kitchen just to grab some.

 

“I thought I could swing by today,” Loras said to him, quietly so Sansa wouldn’t hear him. “I knew you were off from work, but I didn’t realize you had company . . . ”

 

“Yeah,” Sandor said, “she comes over from time to time, too.”

 

“Maybe we should make a schedule,” Loras suggested, and he made a funny up and down gesture with both of his hands moving in opposite directions of each other. “Synchronize things.”

 

Sandor slowly turned his head to Loras. “Do I look like a schedule maker?”

 

“You make schedules for work, don’t you?”

 

Sandor reached out and popped Loras across the back of his fluffy head.

 

“Ow!” Loras cried out, and he leaned away from Sandor to gingerly rub his head where Sandor’s hand had collided with it. “What the hell was that for?”

 

“Being a smartass,” Sandor told him in all seriousness.

 

Sansa joined Sandor on the couch to his right side, plopping herself down on the cushions with her iced cream soda. Sandor looked over at her as she was taking a sip, and for no reason at all that he could think of, her face turned a pretty shade of deep crimson. She looked away from him, her hair falling against her face and making a curtain, and Sandor looked back to Loras.

 

Loras had an amused expression on his face. “Well,” he said, “you hold onto these sodas, Sandor, and I’ll come back another day. Give you two lovebirds some private time.” He flashed a bright grin at Sandor, and quickly stood up to move out of the way of Sandor’s hand in case Sandor tried to swing at him again.

 

“I hate you, Loras,” Sandor called out in a casual voice.

 

“Oh, don’t lie,” Loras called back. “You _love_ me.”

 

“In your dreams.”

 

“Light, fluffy, wonderful dreams,” Loras threw back at him.

 

“Fuck off, Loras,” Sandor called out again, and this time he stuck up his middle finger.

 

“Sit on it!” Loras hollered out once he was standing at the front door, and he left Sandor’s apartment, closing the door behind himself. Sansa was laughing softly beside him, trying to hide it with her hand shielding her mouth, but it was no use. Sandor could still hear it.

 

“What are you laughing at?” Sandor asked her.

 

Sansa dropped her hand from her mouth, revealing a big grin underneath it. “You two,” she said. “You bicker like an old married couple.”

 

“Don’t say that,” Sandor said, looking at her with a very serious expression on his face as he slowly shook his head. “Don’t ever say that again.”

 

“Why not?” she asked, still smiling at him. Her eyes twinkled with amusement.

 

Sandor leaned forward to put his bottle onto the coffee table, and then he leaned towards Sansa. “Because I go for women,” he explained in a low voice, and his eyes dropped to her hair and to her chest, remembering the way she had been undressed before Loras had barged in on them. “Tall, long-legged, blue-eyed, red-haired women,” Sandor finished in a murmur, closing the distance between them.

 

Sansa was breathing heavily again, and she carefully moved to place her glass onto the floor and out of their way. When she righted herself again, Sandor took his opportunity to kiss her, and her mouth tasted sweet like vanilla cream. He grasped the back of her neck to hold her as he captured her lips with his, and Sansa twisted on the couch to face him. He wanted to get back into those jeans again, but first, he wanted to kiss her.

 

She sunk backwards onto the couch, and Sandor followed her. He positioned himself above her, letting go of her to press his hands onto the couch. Sansa hooked her legs around his body. Sansa’s hands held both sides of his face as she kissed him back with the same eagerness he gave her, but then she pulled away from him and stopped him from coming back down to her as she held his head in place. Sandor looked down at her with confusion on his face until she opened her lips, swollen from kissing, to speak.

 

“I was trying to tell you earlier,” Sansa said softly. “Next week is my birthday.”

 

Sandor stared down at her, finally registering it in his mind. “Your birthday,” he repeated.

 

“Yes,” Sansa whispered, “my birthday.”

 

Sandor wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say to that. “Okay,” Sandor finally managed to get out.

 

A little frown creased Sansa’s beautiful face. “Well, aren’t you going to get me something? You know, a present? A gift? Like normal people do?”

 

Sandor narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you saying I’m not normal?”

 

Sansa’s face crinkled into a grin, and she laughed at him. “I’m not saying that,” she told him, reaching up to place one of her hands against his chest.

 

“You insinuated I wasn’t normal—”

 

“I did _not_ ,” Sansa denied, laughing harder. He was only messing with her, but sometimes she made it too damn easy.

 

“Well, now I’m not going to get you a present,” Sandor said, sounding deadly serious about it.

 

Sansa gasped. “You wouldn’t!”

 

“Exactly,” Sandor said, “I just said I wouldn’t.”

 

Sansa pulled her hand away from his chest long enough to ball it into a fist and punch him playfully with it. “Don’t be an asshole,” she whined, and her eyes took on a sad quality like she was beginning to believe him.

 

“I came this way,” Sandor told her, keeping up the joke for a little bit longer. “You knew what you were getting into when you asked me—”

 

Sansa punched him lightly in the chest again, the corners of her mouth turning downwards and her eyes glistening with sadness. “But it’s my birthday . . . ”

 

Sandor couldn’t keep up the act any longer. He leaned forward to try and kiss her again, but the hurt look was still in Sansa’s eyes and she pushed at his chest to prevent him from kissing her. “Sansa,” he murmured, “I was playing.”

 

Sansa looked uncertain, though. “You sounded serious to me . . . ”

 

“That’s because I’m good at it,” Sandor told her, and he looked her straight in the eyes. “Of course, I’ll get you something for your birthday.”

 

“You will?” she asked softly. The look on her face was so damn cute. Sandor had to refrain from trying to kiss Sansa again before he answered her.

 

“Yes,” he said, leaning in closer. “Now, can I kiss you?”

 

Sansa opened her mouth, taking in a breath before she answered him. “Yes,” she whispered below her breath, and Sandor closed the distance between them to capture her lips with his before she could find another reason to protest with him.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 63\. You Change the Equation that I Add Up To – “Haunted” by Poe  
> 64\. Define Your Meaning of War – “You’re Going Down” by Sick Puppies  
> 65\. Through So Many Splintered Trees – “Amazed” by Poe  
> 66\. You are a China Shop, and I am a Bull – “You Had Time” by Ani DiFranco  
> 67\. Which is Sweeter, Love or Its Loss – “My Vampire Heart” by Tom McRae  
> 68\. Stranger in My House – “Stranger in My House” by Tamia  
> 69\. Don’t Make Me Say It Out Loud – “Don’t Make Me Wait” by This World Fair  
> 70\. It’s All Gonna Happen – “This is What Makes Us Girls” by Lana Del Rey  
> 71\. Skin to Bone – “Skin to Bone” by Linkin Park  
> 72\. As Good a Place to Fall as Any – “Bedroom Hymns” by Florence + the Machine


	73. A Dark Road that Leads to My House

_* * *_

 

The street lights flew by the windows one by one, lighting up the night around them. Loras focused on the highway as he drove with both hands on the steering wheel. When he was alone, he tended to drive using only one, but Brienne was sitting in the passenger seat across from him, and he didn’t want to give her a reason to say anything negative to him. Brienne could be a bit more strict about things than most of the other officers, but Loras wasn’t going to hold it against her. In all fairness she had been through a lot lately, especially considering that whole situation with Jaime. From what she had told him so far, the two of them were still together, but if her daily attitude was anything to go by, Brienne and Jaime were sitting on rocky times together.

 

Brienne had unloaded a lot on Loras lately, but during the last week or so, she had gotten tight-lipped on the matters she used to talk about daily. Loras didn’t push her for information or ask her personal questions, but he had noticed the silence that had overcome her. He gave Brienne her space. After all, she had unloaded a lot on him and maybe now she just needed to simmer down. The men at work were giving her a hard time on top of that, and Loras gave them a piece of mind whenever he caught them in the act. Sometimes he did it even when they hadn’t just said something nasty to or about Brienne. Regardless of what mess Jaime had gotten himself into with his own poor decisions, Brienne wasn’t a part of that. It wasn’t fair for the department to alienate her like that. The few women in their department were kind to her, but the men there were complete assholes over the whole Jaime ordeal.

 

Loras had taken it upon himself to look out for Brienne. Mostly, it was because of the guilt he felt for being somewhat responsible for what was happening to her. Of course, the idea had been Renly’s idea, but Loras had backed it up. He had supported it one hundred percent, and he had never questioned any part of it, except for the inclusion of Sansa. That had been the only thing he had ever had a problem with, but even then, it didn’t cross Loras’s mind about all of the small people who would be affected by it. Brienne was one of them. She didn’t deserve it either. She was a good person, and she was damn fine officer of the law.

 

As for the day of Jaime’s arrest, that hadn’t gone the way Loras expected it to go. He had never in a million years imagined that Chief Inspector Selmy would ask him to arrest Jaime right there in his office. He hadn’t even thought he would be invited inside of it, knowing what would happen once that door closed behind them. Maybe Chief Inspector Selmy had thought Loras would be his next rising candidate for the sergeant position, though Loras wondered if he could accept it anytime soon with that kind of taint on it. He had arrested the last sergeant, and Loras wasn’t sure if he would want the position after that. He would want it one day, of course, but not right now. They would have to give it some time. Loras doubted Chief Inspector Selmy would fill it so soon, anyway.

 

The glow of more orange street lights passed by his window, and Loras glanced out of it as they passed over a bridge. They were entering another part of the city, and there was a residential area was up ahead known for having trouble from time to time. As they drove in silence, the radio crackled to life in the middle of the dash. There was a report about a disturbance out on Dreadfort Lane, and dispatch asked for any local officers to pick it up. The caller described he heard a woman’s scream come one of the houses on their lane, and dispatch gave out the address to the place in question.

 

Loras glanced over at Brienne to see her reaction to the report. “That’s not far from us,” he said. “Think we should pick it up?”

 

Brienne stared forward at the intercom system on the dash, narrowing her eyes at it. She was silent for a moment before she looked up at the windshield with the same look on her face. “We should answer it,” she told him firmly. “There could be a woman in trouble.”

 

“All right,” Loras agreed. He tilted his head towards the intercom system. “Tell dispatch we’re picking this one up.”

 

Loras didn’t turn on the sirens, but he turned on the emergency vehicle lights. The night around them lit up with a blue hue from the lights on top of the car, and Brienne picked up the intercom mouthpiece and answered the report. Loras pressed his foot down harder on the gas pedal. He was intent to arrive there within a decent timeframe in case anything bad was happening on Dreadfort Lane. With a name like that, a part of him couldn’t even doubt it.

 

“Who names a street ‘Dreadfort Lane?’” Loras pondered out loud. Brienne didn’t answer him immediately, but she spoke up after a few seconds of silence.

 

“Who knows,” she simply said, and her tone was curt, so Loras decided to let it drop for now.

 

The rest of the drive was in relative silence as they passed through the streets to their final location. Dreadfort Lane was dark at night due to a lack of streetlights on the road. There were a few interspersed at long distances, but they weren’t close enough to give sufficient lighting. Loras cruised slowly as he and Brienne looked at the numbers for the houses. When they spotted the one in the report over the intercom, Loras pulled into the driveway and parked the vehicle.

 

The two of them got out of the car together, and Loras waited on his side for Brienne to come around and meet him. They walked up to the house side by side, and Brienne took the initiative as she reached forward and knocked on the door with a firm rap of her knuckles.

 

“Police!” Brienne called out, loud enough for her voice to travel past the closed door. “We are here about a noise complaint.”

 

Loras heard movement within the house, but it took some time before someone answered the door. They stood there waiting for what felt like a few minutes before the front door was unlocked and pulled open into the house.

 

Upon seeing the face of the man on the other side, Loras stared in shock.

 

It was Ramsay Bolton. Ramsay’s own eyes seemed to widen in interest at the sight of Loras, and then he slowly turned his head to look at Brienne. His look of interest then spread into a grin as his eyes gleamed with something that was a mockery of happiness.

 

“Officer Brienne Tarth,” Ramsay drawled out. “Long time, no see?”

 

Loras carefully glanced at Brienne to see that she was containing her rage as best as possible, but it still looked like she wanted to pull her gun on Ramsay. Loras spoke before anything stupid happened. “Brienne,” Loras said, “why don’t you wait in the car?”

 

“I’m fine right here,” Brienne said tersely, still looking straight at Bolton.

 

“Yes, Brienne,” Ramsay chimed in, “why don’t you wait in the car and let the men discuss the issue?”

 

Brienne opened her mouth to say something else, but Loras cut her off.

 

“Brienne,” Loras repeated with a firm voice, “wait in the car.”

 

She cut a dark look at Loras, turning all of her rage towards Ramsay onto him with a single look, but she didn’t protest. Brienne looked right back at Ramsay to show him she wasn’t afraid of him, and then she retreated back to the police car to wait on Loras. It was the best thing for her to do right now. Loras knew all about the encounter years ago when Ramsay had tricked and captured Brienne, holding her hostage for a few hours before Jaime came to the rescue. It was probably the reason the two of them got together, Loras thought. However, there was also the matter of Ramsay saying on the six o’clock news of how Brienne and Jaime had framed him and he was going to get his payback. Loras was certain Brienne hadn’t forgotten about that yet either.

 

Loras focused his gaze directly on Ramsay, and Ramsay returned the stare. The man was impossible to move and hard as a rock. Nothing unnerved him. Loras knew Ramsay Bolton was guilty of every single murder they had pinned on him. The evidence was overwhelming. Nobody had faked that. Loras wasn’t so much of an idiot to believe otherwise.

 

Loras wondered, though, why Oberyn and his daughters hadn’t taken out this psychopath yet.

 

“There was a report about ten minutes ago,” Loras began, “of a disturbance coming from within your house. It was described as a scream.”

 

“I’ve been watching a movie,” Ramsay said calmly. “I might have had the sound up too loud. I’ll be sure to turn it down.”

 

“Do you mind if I have a look within your house?” Loras asked in a casual manner, his hand resting idly on his duty belt. He tilted his upper body to the right, which allowed for him to glance over Ramsay’s shoulder. Loras was trying to see into the house without making it too obvious. If he played nice, maybe Ramsay would let him have a peek around the inside. When he returned his eyes to Ramsay, though, Loras noticed a change in them. The man’s eyes had turned calculating and distrustful. Very slowly, Ramsay inched his way to the left of his doorway, and he drew the door with him so that it didn’t allow for such a good view into his house anymore.

 

“If you return with a warrant in hand, Officer Loras,” Ramsay said to Loras, staring unblinkingly at him, “I’ll be more than happy to oblige.”

 

Loras pursed his lips together, realizing he couldn’t push it. He knew he had lost his opportunity with Ramsay’s answer, and now the only choice was to leave. Unless they received another call or complaint, there wasn’t much they could do. Loras glanced around the front yard to the left and the right of where he stood, looking for anything odd out of place or a piece of evidence that might tell him something, but Ramsay’s yard was neat, trimmed, and clean. Nothing stuck out to Loras, and so he raised his gaze back to Ramsay and forced a smile at the man.

 

Tilting his head in a farewell, Loras said, “Have a good night, then, Mr. Bolton.”

 

Loras and Ramsay eyed each other as Loras took three steps back from the front door, and he turned around to walk back to the vehicle. He heard the door shut behind him, Ramsay retreating back into his home. As Loras reached his door, he looked up first. Loras paused in mid-movement. Something across the street caught his attention, and he squinted in the darkness to see the figure better. Once he recognized the face, Loras briefly opened the door to the police car. He bent over and looked at Brienne across from him in the passenger seat.

 

“Hey,” Loras said. “Wait here a moment. I see someone over there. I’m going to ask him if he heard anything.”

 

Brienne nodded, seeming to agree with his idea, and Loras shut the door and looked both ways before crossing the street. Some people drove like maniacs at night, and Loras wasn’t going to risk getting hit by someone coming up out of nowhere. When he reached the other side, he strode right up to the man who just looked like he was having a smoke outside of his house. The thing was Loras knew the man didn’t live out here, but he knew what brought him to Dreadfort Lane.

 

“Hello, Oberyn,” Loras said below his breath. “What brings you out here?”

 

It was a rhetorical question, but Oberyn grinned at Loras. He was clearly amused by the situation, and he removed his cigarette from his mouth. “What do you think?” Oberyn said. “I am keeping an eye on this fool.”

 

“Fool?” Loras asked. “What’s he done? Better yet, why is he still here?”

 

Oberyn took a long, slow drag of his cigarette. When he pulled it away again, he blew out the smoke languorously. “One question at a time,” Oberyn complained, and he wrinkled up his nose as he cocked his head to the side and shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t tell yet, but he is a fool. Of that much, I am certain. Nymeria has been tracking him back and forth from his house to a cabin he has out in the woods. I have been watching him tonight to see if he goes back. He has only been here for an hour. He does not see us follow him, so he is a fool.” Oberyn took another hit off of his cigarette.

 

“I repeat,” Loras said, “why isn’t he gone?”

 

Oberyn cut his dark eyes at Loras. Despite their darkness, they shone against the night sky. “Do I look like an idiot? His neighbors are nosey. They are uneasy. They watch him as much as me and my daughters. The job is to take him out quietly, not to put ourselves on the six o’clock news. Until he is alone, we will not risk it.”

 

“Is he not alone at the cabin?”

 

“I never see a person there with him,” Oberyn said, “but something tells me he is not alone. However, the land is rigged with traps. We’ve sent animals out. They have all died. He has high voltage electric wires and hidden pits, but that is only what we have discovered so far. There could be more. Someone is working with him. Someone powerful. He has more than he should as a man freshly released from prison.”

 

“Booby-trapped land?” Loras asked, taken aback at the idea.

 

“You heard me,” Oberyn repeated. “Now, go. Before you linger too long and make me look suspicious.”

 

“Did you hear a scream?”

 

Oberyn narrowed his eyes. “A scream? No, no scream, but I heard a screeching cat across the road. Twitchy neighbors, like I said.”

 

“All right,” Loras told him. He tilted his head in farewell to Oberyn like he did with Ramsay. “Have a good night.”

 

“You, too,” Oberyn said, and he flashed a toothy smile at Loras.

 

Looking both ways across the street again, Loras crossed it and hurried back to the vehicle. He opened the door and moved to sit in the driver seat, shutting it behind him and cranking the car. When he looked into the rearview mirror, he noticed Oberyn was already gone from sight. He glanced ahead again through the windshield at Ramsay’s house, but he saw nothing in the windows and all of the curtains were drawn shut.

 

Loras backed out of the driveway and pulled into the street, and they resumed their nightly patrol around the city. The rest of the night was uneventful, though. When their shifts were over, Loras drove them back to the station. Brienne told him goodnight, and he waved goodbye to her. They went their separate ways, and Loras took his personal car home to the penthouse he and Renly shared in the middle of the city. He turned on the radio for the ride and rolled down the windows to get some fresh air. He couldn’t get what Oberyn had told him out of his head.

 

Loras wasn’t aware of any areas like that on the outskirts of the city. There were a few privately owned acres of land here or there with houses built on them, but he never remembered hearing about anything like the one Oberyn had described to him. Of course, Oberyn had no reason to lie, but Loras couldn’t help but have doubts and questions. Maybe on one of his days off he could try to trail Oberyn, but he was a little afraid to do that. Oberyn was a master at what he did, and Loras was just barely out of being a rookie officer. Oberyn would catch him in the act, and Loras didn’t want to jeopardize the business relationship that existed between Renly and Oberyn. If he followed Oberyn anywhere, Loras knew it had the potential to jeopardize everything.

 

He struggled with his thoughts all the way home.

 

Once Loras arrived home, he walked inside and closed the door behind himself. He kicked off his shoes at the door, placing them on the mat off to the right. The penthouse apartment was quiet as usual, save for the steady hum of the cool air blowing through the vents. Loras walked his way down the hallways, turning his head left and right and looking for Renly.

 

He didn’t see him until he entered their bedroom. Renly never went to bed early, so Loras was shocked to see him fast asleep in their bed. Renly must have had a bad day to be in bed this early. Then again, maybe it was a good day. Renly had trouble sleeping whenever he was in a bad mood, so maybe things went great today if he was sleeping soundly like a baby in their bed. Frowning at himself for his confused thoughts, Loras shrugged off his clothes outside of the bathroom door and stepped in to take a shower. When he was done washing up, he dried off and grabbed some clothes to wear to bed. Loras slipped those on soundlessly as he walked over to their bed, and then he slid under the covers in his best attempt to not move the bed and wake up Renly.

 

However, he failed at that. Renly stirred and rolled over, squeezing his eyelids before opening them to look at Loras. He must have not been that fast asleep, after all, Loras thought with a smile. Renly saw his smile, and he returned it. Renly closed the short distance between them, slipping his arm around Loras. His eyes were shut again, and he seemed as if he might drift off into sleep again. Loras put one of his arms around Renly, and he couldn’t stop the next question from leaving his mouth.

 

“Do you trust Oberyn?” Loras asked softly. From his position of lying upon his back on the bed, he leaned his head to the left to get a better glimpse of Renly’s face beside him. Renly opened his eyes, though they were heavy with sleep, and he narrowed them at Loras.

 

“What kind of question is that,” Renly stated, his voice sounding drowsy.

 

“Do you _trust_ him,” Loras repeated this time, though he refused to phrase it like a question twice in a row. Renly knew what he meant the first time he said it.

 

Renly closed his eyes again, sighing deeply against Loras’s shoulder. “He had always done great work for me, but I would trust him about as much as I would trust a viper lying wait in the grass.”

 

“So,” Loras drawled out in a quiet voice, “you don’t trust him?”

 

“I still don’t get the purpose of the question,” Renly said.

 

“Never mind,” Loras added dismissively.

 

“What?” Renly asked from Loras’s shoulder. “Had he done something to make you distrust him?”

 

“Not yet,” Loras said, though he felt wary about adding anything to that, “but I’m wary.”

 

“Good,” Renly told him, his voice muffled against Loras’s skin. “I taught you to be wary of people. Remain that way. You can’t trust everyone. There are lions, wolves, snakes, and all sorts of beasts beyond our den. Keep your eyes on them, always. Never take them off.”

 

“I thought you were friends with everyone,” Loras murmured, turning his head to look at Renly again.

 

Renly slowly opened his eyes and tilted his head upward onto the pillow. “Have you ever heard that phrase, Loras, ‘keep your friends close, but your enemies closer?’”

 

“Of course, I have,” Loras said quietly.

 

“I have surrounded myself with all sorts of people that I have brought into our circle,” Renly began, “but you must remember that if something were to happen to me, who do you think they would flock to next? No one stays true to a dead man. They serve the one who treats them best, and I treat them the best. There are a few faithful, but there are others who are here only for the show. Most people are temporary, not permanent, and I’m not such an idiot to think otherwise. A lot of people think I’m an uncalculating fool who likes to party, laugh, and drink, but I wouldn’t have gotten this far if that’s all I was.”

 

“You’re more than that,” Loras whispered to him, turning over onto his side to face Renly. “You’ve _always_ been more than that.”

 

“To you,” Renly said, and the small curve of his lip was almost sad. “To some, but not to all.”

 

“They don’t know you like I know you.”

 

Renly laughed, a small but hearty laugh that shook his chest. His eyes crinkled at the corners, making his face look young again if only for a moment. “No one knows me like you do, Loras,” he said. He raised his eyebrows. “I doubt even my mother did.”

 

Loras didn’t know what else to say. Renly was wary of most people, which was a good thing, but Loras still felt the need to look out for him. In a way he had always been Renly’s sword and shield, there to stand up for him and protect him, even if Renly didn’t need it. It was a hard habit to kick after all of these years. He had been doing it for so long that it had become like second nature to him, but Renly never seemed to have a complaint about it.

 

He would keep his eyes on Oberyn, but he wouldn’t follow him. It was too risky, but he could still watch him. It would be worth it in case there was something else going on beyond their knowledge. In the long run Renly wouldn’t be able to hold cautiousness against Loras. It was a worthy trait to have and to use, and it had gotten them this far already.

 

His mind, however, was growing tired of thinking so much lately. The guilt he felt over Jaime’s arrest and the fallout from it had been enough to rob Loras of sleep and occasionally make him irritable enough to snap at people at work, but outside of that, he tried to keep himself in check. Renly didn’t see what it was doing to him, and neither did Sandor. Though, some part of Loras thought, Sandor appeared to feel some guilt over his involvement with Renly’s plan as well, so maybe Loras wasn’t as alone as he treated himself. He didn’t know if he could share that with Sandor. For the time being, Loras kept it all to himself.

 

Renly’s eyes were already closed again, his dark lashes fluttering against his cheeks. His breathing had evened out and fallen into a steady rhythm as well, and Loras wondered if Renly had fallen asleep so quickly. It seemed as though Renly had at least drifted off, which was close enough. Loras hooked his arm around Renly’s back to grasp his shoulder, and he leaned his forehead against Renly’s forehead. He could feel Renly’s breath tickling his chest, and he closed his eyes as well. Loras wasn’t sure how easily sleep would come to him tonight with so many distrustful thoughts inside of his head, but he was going to have to give it a try.

 

With Renly in his arms, perhaps it wouldn’t be so hard.

 

 


	74. Poker Face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** For psychological torment and strong mental distress during a kidnap situation. This chapter isn't gruesome, but it's extremely uncomfortable.

_* * *_

 

Arya stared down at the plate in front of her. It was a heaping pile of spaghetti noodles smothered in a chunky meat marinara sauce, and the aroma alone was enough to make her mouth water in anticipation of eating it. She could smell the tinge of warm garlic in her nostrils as well as the hearty smell of cooked beef. Even the pasta noodles had been cooked just right to where they weren’t too dry, and they looked delicious and slippery soft like they should look, according to Arya at least. Her mother had made them this way back home, and Arya wanted to pick up her fork, dig in, and scarf it all down like a starving street urchin—but there was a thought holding her back from eating it.

 

Arya didn’t know where the meat had come from, and normally, the thought wouldn’t have bothered her, but this was a meal created by a serial killer whose pastimes included flaying people alive and saving their skins afterwards. Her stomach curdled at the thought, and though it smelled like beef and looked like beef, the sudden and overwhelming urge to vomit overtook her.

 

Her throat filled with bile, and Arya quickly turned away from the food. Leaning over the side of her chair, she heaved the watery contents of her stomach all over the floor. Arya’s throat burned from the acid of her stomach coming up, and unbidden, her body heaved once more to rid herself of anything else left behind. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself not to look at it. The mess on the floor would only make her want to vomit again, and Arya had barely eaten anything since she had been in captivity.

 

From across the table, she heard a napkin slap down against the table along with a dramatic sigh. A chair screeched along the floor as Ramsay pushed it back, which meant he was getting up from his seat. Arya held onto the bottom of her chair with both hands. They were tied together as usual, but Ramsay had given her the same knot as before with a cord hanging between her hands to allow for some movement with eating and using the bathroom. Arya lifted her head before she opened her eyes, and she glanced over to see Ramsay approaching her end of the table. He walked over to her slowly, stopping not far from her vomit. While his face appeared to look upset, he didn’t look angry.

 

He snatched the napkin from beside her plate, throwing it at her lap. “Clean it up,” Ramsay ordered, and his voice was hard like stone and harsh as well.

 

She had angered him. It lingered down in the deepest chords of his voice, and she pushed back her chair to allow herself to kneel on the part of the floor where her chair had been sitting. Arya crouched down onto her knees, and unfolding the large napkin, she pressed it down to the floor and began to clean up the mess as best as she could clean it without a mop and soap. Her rebellious spirit never permitted for much obeisance, but she had been using it so far around Ramsay, and it kept him happy. He had never once struck her or hurt her, and he didn’t insist on watching her use the toilet to make sure she wasn’t up to any funny business in the bathroom either. The first time he had let her use it, Arya found the cabinets all empty. He had prepared for her looking through them, whether it was for a weapon or an object to help her cut her bonds or to help her escape. On top of that, the bathroom had no window inside of it, so there was no way to escape when he left her alone in it. There was just a very small ventilation system on the ceiling, and it was too small to crawl through even if she busted a hole in it.

 

When Arya had cleaned up the majority of the mess, Ramsay seemed satisfied with her effort. She looked up to see him uncross his arms, and he walked away from her to go back to his end of the table. He sat down in his chair again, and pulled it back up to the table with a screech of the legs against the floor. Arya still remained crouched on the floor, wondering what he expected her to do with the filthy napkin in her hands. Finally, she stood up, turning to look at him. Arya held up both of her hands because she couldn’t hold up just one, and the soiled fabric dangled from the fingers of her right hand.

 

“What do you want me to do with this?” she asked, referring to the napkin.

 

Ramsay had already picked up his fork and knife again, twirling the spaghetti around his fork before he cut off the longer loose strands of it. He brought the fork to his mouth, and ate the entire rounded heap on the end. As he chewed on it, various noodles hung out of his mouth past his lips. It was almost comical, but the look in his cold blue eyes was anything but. Arya didn’t laugh.

 

“Throw it away in the kitchen,” he said carelessly, waving his hand that held the knife at the kitchen entrance.

 

Arya nodded her head and complied with his instruction. The kitchen was just out of sight of Ramsay and his meal, so Arya walked over to one of the drawers first. As she glanced back at the kitchen entrance, she pulled open the drawer as slowly as possible to not make any noise. It didn’t make a single sound, and then she glanced down to look inside of it. There were forks, spoons, butter knives, and steak knives. Arya’s instinct screamed at her to grab a steak knife, but a little voice in the back of her head rose up. _It’s too easy_ , it said to her. _Don’t do it tonight_. _Do it later_. _Wait for it_.

 

Arya snatched up one of the knives, and immediately, she opened one of the top cabinets just a fraction, and slid the knife right there onto the edge. She shut the door just as quickly. _Fourth cabinet from the door_ , Arya reminded herself. _Fourth cabinet from the door_.

 

Swallowing past the burning sensation that still lingered in her throat, she slowly closed the open drawer of silverware. Arya then walked over to the trash bin in the corner of the kitchen, pushed open the swaying lid, and dropped the ruined napkin inside of it.

 

She returned to the dining room table after that, and Ramsay lifted his eyes over his dinner at her.

 

“You took too long,” he said, twirling more pasta around his fork and cutting it with his knife. Arya’s eyes glanced down at his knife as she seated herself back in her chair.

 

“I felt nauseous,” Arya said, even though it was a lie.

 

“You need to eat,” Ramsay instructed, pointing his knife across the table towards her plate. “I can’t have you starving on my watch. Now, _eat_.”

 

Arya looked down at her plate again. “Can I just eat the pasta?”

 

Ramsay stilled at the other end of the table. When she looked up at him, he had both hands on the table, curled around his utensils, which were standing upright in his hands. Ramsay tilted his head to the side, looking confused. “Why? What’s wrong with it?” he asked.

 

Arya was just as confused right back. She blinked at Ramsay, not expecting that reaction out of him. Before she could answer him, he barreled forward with more.

 

“I admit,” Ramsay said comically, looking down at his plate with wide eyes and raising both hands from the table at once, “it’s _not_ my best. It’s my mother’s recipe, and she did it far better than me—”

 

“I’m a vegetarian,” Arya blurted out, cutting him off. She wasn’t a vegetarian. It was another lie, but Arya also wasn’t going to eat meat marinara sauce prepared by Ramsay Bolton.

 

Ramsay cut his eyes up at her again. He had a strange calculating look in them. It was almost like he didn’t believe her. Even if he didn’t believe it, Ramsay still put down his utensils, got up from the table, and went into the kitchen. Arya’s eyes followed him until he disappeared out of sight. When he came back, he was carrying a plate of plain pasta noodles in one hand and a container of parmesan cheese in the other.

 

He dropped the plate unceremoniously beside her untouched one, and it clanged against the table. He then put down the container of parmesan cheese next to it with more force than was necessary. Ramsay scooped up her first plate of food, and he carried it back into the kitchen. “I’ll feed it to my dogs,” he called out to her as he walked away, and the words caused a shiver ran down Arya’s spine. She had heard some barking from time to time during the night, or was it during the day? Arya couldn’t tell because Ramsay kept most of his windows covered with some kind of black film. It blocked out all of the daylight and any view of the outside. If Arya was lucky and he let her out of the room to eat with him during the day, then she could see some of light glow behind the curtains in the dining room, the kitchen, or the living room.

 

But she hadn’t seen any dogs yet, though. She had been wondering who they belonged to—if they were his or his neighbors. Did he have any neighbors? Were they in the city or outside of it? Arya never asked these questions. She was sure Ramsay would never answer them. He might even get upset that she bothered to ask. When he returned from the kitchen, he went back to eating on his end of the table. Arya picked up the parmesan cheese and sprinkled it over her bare pasta. It was good enough for her as long as it didn’t have meat in it. She twirled a heap around her fork like him, and bit into it without cutting it.

 

Arya devoured the heap of pasta in no time. She washed it down with the glass of water he had given her. He didn’t give her anything but water, and it made her have to pee all of the time. Arya was tired of it. She wanted something else to drink, but she never asked if she could have something else, so she kept silent and drank the water he had provided for her. After all, she didn’t want him to take it away. Arya was conscious of not giving him a reason to take anything even remotely kind away from her.

 

After she had gulped down the entire glass of water, Ramsay was still eating his meal. A sudden question popped into Arya’s head, and since she never took the chance of asking him anything yet, she thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask him this one thing. It might have been just as important to him as it was to her, anyway.

 

“When is the person who wanted you to,” Arya paused for a second, searching for the best word to describe it, “get me coming for me?”

 

Ramsay’s hands stilled against the table, holding his utensils, but he continued to chew as his eyes lifted up to meet her gaze across the distance. His eyes were a cold blue, the color of icy water. They chilled Arya’s spine every time she had to look at them. “That’s none of your concern,” he said slowly. Ramsay lowered his eyes back to his plate, resuming to eat again after he had swallowed what was already in his mouth. “He is a busy man. He warned me that I might have you for a little while until he could send someone out here.”

 

“Why isn’t he coming himself?” Arya inquired further, hoping against hope that maybe if the boss man sent someone in his stead to collect her that her identity might remain hidden for a while longer. It was a shred of hope worth holding onto, however slim it felt. Arya hoped before then that she could manage an escape. Day by boring day here, she had nothing to do but think and plot and look for opportunities to do so.

 

Ramsay looked up again. “What?” he asked. “So you could see his face?”

 

“I’ve seen yours,” Arya said boldly. Maybe a little too bold as she stared back at him.

 

A small smile crept onto Ramsay’s face, and his eyes lowered again to his food as he cut into it. “You won’t say a thing,” Ramsay told her. “You’ll find out soon enough. Silence and obedience will be your best friends.” When he finished cutting his spaghetti, he looked up at her. “Living is better than the alternative.”

 

Arya knew what he was saying, and she forced herself to keep eye contact until he looked away first. Needless to say, he seemed amused by her reaction.

 

She remained silent until he was done with his meal.

 

Afterwards, Ramsay took her by the arm and led her towards the bathroom. He had always let go of her right before the door, telling her to get cleaned up quick. Each time Arya had taken a bath, Ramsay also waited outside of the bathroom door until she was finished. As creepy as it was, he had never walked in on her. He never left her alone, except to sleep or if he was busy. Whenever he left her alone, Ramsay usually handcuffed her to the headboard of the bed that had been hers since he had taken her out of the box. It was a huge but uncomfortable bed in a small room with no light and a barred window. The window had the same black film on it as most of the other windows. Arya had tried to move the bed in the past few days, but it was too heavy. She couldn’t move it but an inch or two.

 

Ramsay startled her this time, though. Once they reached the bathroom door, he shoved her against the wall. Arya’s heart rate shot through the roof as his hands started to impatiently and quickly run over her body. The threat of torture was in some ways bearable to Arya. She could handle it, she thought—but not _this_. Arya felt tears sting the back of her eyes as she feared he meant to do something else entirely to her, and she folded her arms protectively against her chest.

 

“Where _is_ it?” Ramsay hissed all of a sudden, and Arya’s mind snapped back to reality.

 

“What?” she asked, dumbfounded at his question. The shock passed her by, and Arya noticed his hands were no longer on her body. He stood upright again after he had patted down her legs, and he was looking right at her as furious as could be.

 

“The knife,” he said, his voice dangerously low. “You’re telling me you didn’t take a knife from the kitchen when you had a chance?”

 

“No, I didn’t,” Arya lied. She had hid it in the cabinet. She wasn’t stupid enough to hide it on her body. She had considered it, and then she considered that he might search her . . .

 

That was all he was doing, searching her.

 

Arya exhaled a deep breath of relief. She had feared for one irrevocable moment that he meant to force her.

 

Ramsay stared at her for a long time. His eyes narrowed as he held her gaze, but he took note of the breath of relief, the unintentional confusion, and he loosened his grip on her. Ramsay slowly took a step back, raising his chin.

 

There was a small twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

 

“Good,” he said calmly, and he patted the side of her cheek. Ramsay pulled out the knife from his own pocket, grabbed her wrists, and with two swift motions, cut the cords of her bonds on both wrists. “Now, go wash up,” Ramsay told her. “And be quick.”

 

Arya hurried into the bathroom and closed the door before he could stop her.

 

She took her time in the bathroom. Arya needed a moment to herself after that nerve-wracking scare. She had never had anyone pat her down before, but she had seen it a million times on television and in movies. Yet when his hands were on her, him searching her for a knife hadn’t been the first thing to cross her mind. She should have known, Arya thought, but he was a sick creep. Her mind had lurched in the other direction before she could control it. She had never been in a situation before with a threat like that hanging over her head, and now more than ever, Arya wanted to escape. She had wanted to get out of here from day one, but this had given her a reason to push it sooner rather than later. One day his hands might fall on her, and it might not be to search her.

 

Running the water as hot as she could handle it, Arya sunk down into the tub. She scrubbed herself raw with a scratchy body pouf lathered with a bar of plain soap that smelled like nothing but soap. There was no shampoo or conditioner, so Arya used the foam of the soap on her hair, too. Her hair felt kind of dry and ratty, but there was nothing she could do about it. She hadn’t even been here for a week yet. It had only been five days from her count. She started to wonder if anyone had been texting her and if Ramsay had been answering those texts. If Ramsay meant to keep up pretenses, then he ought to be answering them, but Arya couldn’t be sure. He had never shown Arya her phone again.

 

Arya wondered, too, if she could get to her phone. If she could get to it, then she could call someone for help or text a warning message out to Gendry or Sansa or Jon. All of them would take it seriously without question, and they would find a way to get help for her. It was a possibility if Arya could find out where Ramsay kept her phone. If he kept it on himself, then she’d have to find a way to get to it without him realizing it. Arya had never really tried her skills at pickpocketing. Grabbing a phone out of his pocket wasn’t quite as worth the risk as grabbing a knife off of him. At least with a knife she would have a weapon in case things went wrong.

 

Ramsay banged on the door from outside. “Quick!” he yelled through the door. “You’re taking too long.”

 

Arya hopped out of the tub, pulled the plug, and grabbed the towel to dry off with it. She had to pull on the same clothes as earlier, though. Arya didn’t have a second pair of clothes, and Ramsay hadn’t gotten any for her. She had refused to ask him to wash them for her because she had nothing else to wear while he did, and Arya wasn’t prancing around with nothing on but a towel in front of the likes of him. It could give him ideas. Ideas she didn’t want him to have. Dirty clothes were a much better alternative to Arya. Dirty clothes she could handle for now.

 

As she walked out of the bathroom, Ramsay snatched her by the wrist again. He led her to the bedroom where he locked her up for the night every night. They had only just eaten supper. It couldn’t have been that late. Arya furrowed her brow and wondered what was going on, but she didn’t dare ask any questions again so soon.

 

Ramsay handcuffed her to the headboard again as she sat on the bed. Without a word, he turned away from her and left the room, cutting off the light and shutting the door behind himself.

 

In the darkness of the bedroom, there was nothing but silence in the wake of his absence.

 

Arya glanced over at the window again. She had tried to reach it a million times, even if there were bars on it. So far, she had never had any luck. If she could at least get close to it, then she could investigate with peeling back some of the black film to see where this house was situated. Arya never heard any neighbors. She never heard any cars. She didn’t even know if Ramsay ever left the house, which seemed kind of preposterous once she thought about it. He had to have left the house from time to time. There was no way he stayed here twenty-four seven with her, but Arya had never seen Ramsay leave. She had never heard him leave either.

 

If she could get to the window, she could see beyond it.

 

Getting down off of the bed, Arya grabbed a hold of the headboard and used all of her might to push at the bed. It scooted a little bit without making much sound, and so Arya tried again and again and again until her arms felt too weak and the bed had barely moved a foot. She had to take some time to rest and regain her strength, but then she tried for it again.

 

After about an hour or two of intense work and determination given to Arya thanks to Ramsay’s slimy hands on her body, she managed to get the bed all the way towards the window. She then struggled with trying to reach it by hopping onto the bed, but that didn’t work. Arya had to angle the bed to allow herself to get closer to the window, which was harder than just pushing the bed to move it. Now, she had to pull and push at it, and it was a huge and heavy bed.

 

She was sufficiently out of breath by the time her free hand could stretch out and reach the window. Ramsay hadn’t bothered to tie her hands back up with rope, so she only had the handcuff on one wrist, but her wrist was cut up and sore. It even looked like there was some blood from all of her efforts. Still, it had been worth it. Her fingers scrabbled through the bars and scratched at the corner of the black film. Arya never once got frustrated with it. It took a long while, but she managed to scrape up the corner. The black film felt like thick, strong saran wrap against her fingers. Slowly, she peeled it back some, but the corner beneath the black film was just as dark as the film itself. Arya frowned at the sight of it. She couldn’t really see anything.

 

Pulling out her hand, she put it through a different set of bars and peeled the black film back further. It revealed more darkness. Arya kept moving her hand between the bars and pulling until she had successfully reached the other side, and then she ripped the black film off all of the way.

 

Before her, the entire window was still black.

 

Her heart began to pound inside of her chest. Arya pressed her hand against the glass and leaned closer to it, trying to discern what the blackness was on the other side—but there _was_ no other side, just the blackness.

 

It was then that Arya realized it wasn’t because she couldn’t see.

 

It was because the blackness was a thick coat of black paint on the outside of the window, blocking off all light and vision from the outside world beyond it.

 

Arya’s lips started to tremble. Her hand pushed against the glass. She wanted to break it, but if she couldn’t escape through it, then Ramsay would come back, see the broken glass, and punish her for it. He promised he would hurt her if she ever tried to escape, and Arya wanted to defy him and yet not risk it all at once. She wanted to be home again. She wanted to see her family again, but Ramsay talked as if the goal wasn’t to kill her. It almost sounded like she was meant to be some kind of a bargaining chip—but if she was the wrong bargaining chip, then they weren’t going to want to keep her. Unless they could think of a way to use her to kidnap her sister, of course, but Arya would never do such a thing.

 

She balled up her fist against the window, her wrist lying between two of the bars on the window. Arya thought of smashing it to pieces. She imagined the glass cracking and splintering, falling to the floor all around her feet.

 

But even if Arya could break the glass, her hand would still be handcuffed to the headboard of the bed frame. The bed frame would still be too big to go through the window with her, and the window still have bars on it that she couldn’t pull out of the walls. She definitely couldn’t squeeze through them either. There was no route of escape this way, so even if she broke the glass, she wouldn’t be able to get out of this room. Ramsay would be mad, and she would have to face his wrath.

 

Arya thought of moving the bed back to the wall. It would take even longer to get it back in place because now she had to pull more than she could push. Pushing was easier than pulling. She stared at the bed for a moment, and then she glanced back at the window.

 

She was on the brink of crying. Arya almost did it, but then she remembered something.

 

She still had the hidden knife in the kitchen cabinet. Ramsay didn’t even know it was there.

 

Smiling to herself just slightly, Arya willed herself to pull the bed back into place. It took forever to do it, but she was determined to not get caught in her current position and make things worse for herself. Her wrist was bleeding worse by the time she was done, and Arya tried to think of an excuse to tell Ramsay for why her wrist was bleeding whenever he came back for her to eat again. The window was so black that he wouldn’t notice the missing film, which she stuffed under the mattress out of sight. He would never find it there. He would never even look for something that he didn’t know was missing.

 

Arya lay down on the bed at last, curling up close to herself, and tried to go to sleep.

 

At the top of the pillow, blood trickled slowly down her wrist.

 

 


	75. Lord Help Me if I Starve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** Apologies for the delay in this chapter! I went to the Tampa Bay Comic Con over the weekend, and I pretty much spazzed out over meeting Rory, so it took me a while to get back into the swing of things. Anyway, I hope this chapter was worth the wait!

_* * *_

 

Sansa stared down at her phone, frowning at it. Today was her birthday, and her sister hadn’t called or text her even once. Arya promised she would call if she couldn’t make it from Uncle Brynden’s to visit for Sansa’s birthday, but there wasn’t a single missed call from Arya’s phone today. There wasn’t even a text to make up for it, so Sansa tried calling Arya multiple times. The phone was rang and rang and rang without any answer as if there was no one there to pick it up, and each time Sansa pulled the phone away with a hurt expression on her face because she couldn’t understand how Arya would forget her birthday or ignore her on her birthday. It wasn’t like Arya at all.

 

There wasn’t a big party at her house. Sansa hadn’t wanted a big party this year, so she hadn’t planned one and she told her parents not to plan one. They had simply bought her a small cake, stuck it with candles, and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her. Sansa had closed her eyes and blown out the candles while making her wish. Catelyn, Ned, and Rickon had all given her hugs and a kiss on the cheek, but Bran had merely settled for a hug. Arya would have jumped on her back and demanded a piggyback ride around the house, but Arya wasn’t here, and Sansa couldn’t stop thinking about it.

 

She talked to her parents about it, but Cat and Ned both told her that everything was fine. Uncle Brynden went fishing and hunting a lot, and they said he had probably just taken Arya out with him and good luck getting a signal out in the wilderness, even if Arya had brought her phone with her. It struck Sansa that this was possible, but she also thought Arya would remind Uncle Brynden of today’s specialness and he would be decent enough to find a way to let Arya call Sansa since it was her birthday. If Sansa had a car, she would drive out to Uncle Brynden’s house and visit Arya herself.

 

After about twenty or so missed calls, Sansa finally got a text back. Her phone buzzed as it was received, and she lifted it up as she glanced down at the screen to check the name. It was Arya’s nickname on the screen. Sansa had her sister in her phone under her nickname instead of her real name. Arya had done the same with her phone. It was a bit of an inside joke between them. Sansa’s nickname was “Princess,” and Arya’s nickname was “Underfoot.” Sansa quickly swiped her finger over the screen to tap on the message and open it up, but the answer she had received only made her frown worse than before.

 

The text message on her screen from Arya read, “ _Sorry. Forgot it was ur birthday_. _Happy Birthday!_ ”

 

Sansa narrowed her eyes at it. That wasn’t like Arya at all. Her sister wouldn’t forget her birthday. Arya had never forgotten about Sansa’s birthday ever, and why would Arya text Sansa instead of just calling her back when she said she would call her? Sansa tried calling her back just then, but the phone continued to ring and ring and ring until it reached voicemail again. Then, Sansa got a second text. It simply read, “ _Can’t talk now_.”

 

Sansa glared at her phone, and then she sent one right back, asking, “ _Why not?_ ”

 

Sansa waited for about ten minutes with no answer from Arya. When one never came through her phone, she made a small rumbling sound of annoyance at the back of her throat, and then she tossed her phone a foot away onto her bed. It bounced, and fell still. Eventually, Sansa had to pick it up again to answer all of the birthday wishes from all of her friends who had texted her because they were too lazy to call as well. It took her a while to answer them, but when she was finished, Sansa realized she had planned only one other thing for today in the evening. She looked over at her clock. It was almost seven o’clock, and the sky was darkening outside.

 

The other plan was with Sandor, who was going to be outside of her house in the driveway at any moment. Sansa hurriedly grabbed her things, trying not to think about what he might have gotten her as a present for her birthday, and rushed down the stairs once she was out of her room. She slowed down at the bottom, looking around for sight of her mother. Catelyn was carrying a basket of clothes, and upon seeing Sansa with her purse slung over her shoulders, Catelyn took one look at her daughter and put down the basket. She raised her eyebrows, though there was a small smile creasing the corners of her lips.

 

“I take it you’re leaving?” Catelyn asked, quirking one eyebrow above the other.

 

“Yes,” Sansa said, and she smiled back at her mother. “Sandor’s coming over to pick me up.”

 

“Well, have fun,” Catelyn told her.

 

Sansa fidgeted with the strap of her purse, curling her hand around it. There was a question on her mind, but she was afraid of her mother’s possible response to it.

 

“Is it all right if I spend the night at Sandor’s place?” Sansa asked slowly.

 

Catelyn straightened her back as she looked over at Sansa, and she raised her chin somewhat. Her expression was serious. “Do you remember our talk?” she inquired, and by the tone of her voice, Sansa knew what talk she was referring to. She wasn’t likely to ever forget about that.

 

“We’re not going to have sex,” Sansa said in a quite voice. “It’s not like that.”

 

Catelyn’s expression softened at that. Leaving the clothes basket on the floor by her feet, Catelyn approached Sansa until she was standing right in front of her. She placed her hands on Sansa’s shoulders, looking her directly in the eyes. “I’m not saying don’t,” Catelyn told her. “I’m just saying be responsible. You know how I feel about protection.” Sansa felt her face burn with embarrassment, and she glanced away from her mother’s gaze, even though no one else was in the room. Catelyn took Sansa by the chin, though, and brought Sansa’s face back to meet hers again. “You’re an adult now, Sansa,” Catelyn added, and she shook her head. “I can’t tell you what to do and not do. If you want to spend the night, of course you can spend the night.”

 

“I still wanted to ask you out of respect,” Sansa said softly, and she meant it.

 

Catelyn smiled at her. “Well, you’ve asked,” she responded. “Now, go. Have fun, but not too much.” Catelyn patted Sansa’s shoulder, and Sansa smiled back at her mother before heading out for the door.

 

Sansa didn’t think to grab anything else before she left but her purse because she had some clothes and toiletries already at Sandor’s apartment. Her only thought to spending the night was falling asleep beside Sandor, an idea that held so much appeal to her for the few amount of times she had done it. Now that she couldn’t be forbidden from spending the night at his place, she wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. It was sweet, romantic, and peaceful, and Sansa wanted to do it. While she didn’t ask Sandor about it yet, she was pretty positive he wouldn’t object to it.

 

Walking to the end of the driveway, Sansa saw him coming up the road. Sandor parked the car, and she hurried over to it to hop into the passenger side before he pulled off. The weather was freezing outside, but the windows were rolled up and the heat was pouring out of the vents, so Sansa was warm and cozy again in no time.

 

She glanced over at Sandor and smiled at him. “So,” Sansa began, “did you get me anything for my birthday?”

 

Sandor didn’t take his eyes off the road, but he made a face at her question as he snorted. “You’re impatient, aren’t you?”

 

Sansa usually could tell when Sandor was joking, and the expression on his face was exaggerated enough that she knew he wasn’t being serious at all. “Yes,” she answered him. “I’m very impatient.”

 

“I’ve got to teach you patience,” Sandor replied.

 

“Teach me patience?” Sansa asked, incredulous at his suggestion. “I’m more patient than _you_ are.”

 

“Take that back,” he said.

 

“I’m not taking that back,” she told him, “because it’s true.”

 

“Oh, you’ll take it back.”

 

“I won’t,” Sansa answered in a sing-song voice.

 

“You just wait until I park this car,” Sandor warned, but Sansa only laughed at him, and when he parked the car outside of his apartment building beside the curb, nothing else happened, anyway. Sandor didn’t try to tickle her or get her back, so Sansa smiled to herself for her small victory and followed him up to his apartment.

 

She wondered why they were going to his apartment and not going somewhere else. Sansa thought Sandor might take her out somewhere for her birthday to celebrate it, but the weather had been taking a nasty turn lately. It seemed like staying inside was a better idea. Some of the roads had snow on them still, and it would have been horrible to get stuck somewhere on her birthday because of the snow. Besides, his apartment would be cozy and warm. When Sandor unlocked the door, Sansa passed through it as he held it open for her, but she froze just a few feet into his place.

 

Atop the kitchen counter, there was a small box wrapped in silver paper and tied with a red ribbon.

 

Her heart beat a little faster as she stared at the box, and she heard the door close somewhere behind her. She wondered what Sandor could have gotten her that would fit inside such a small box, and the thought caused her heart to beat even harder inside of her chest. A hand gently pressed against her lower back, and Sansa quickly turned her head to look up at Sandor beside her. He stared down at her with uncertainty written across his face, and Sansa wasn’t sure if the look was supposed to comfort her to worry her.

 

When she didn’t make a move towards the box, Sandor pulled his hand away from her back and crossed the distance to grab it off of the counter. He returned to her with it in hand, but he looked down at the present with that same look of uncertainty again. It was small. The size for maybe a ring, Sansa thought. A chill passed down her back as she realized it. Sandor looked at her, but when she didn’t reach out for the present, he began to look unnerved himself. Lowering his gaze to her present, he pulled at the ribbon, letting it fall to the floor, and then he removed the wrapping paper. Under the silver paper, there was a small brown box. It was definitely the size for a ring.

 

Sansa almost panicked because she didn’t know what he was about to do next. Thankfully, Sandor didn’t kneel. He took one step forward, and then another, before he held out the box to her. Sansa hesitated for only a moment, but she accepted the proffered gift into her hands. Very gently, she popped it open. Her breath hitched at the sight of what was inside. It was a simple ring with a golden band and a pearl in the center. Actually, it reminded Sansa of the necklace he had bought her at the little shop on the plaza boulevard. Sandor dispelled all doubt when he spoke next.

 

“I thought it might match your necklace,” he told her simply, like he didn’t know what else to say.

 

Sansa looked up from the ring. Carefully, she closed the lid again. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”

 

“You looked,” Sandor began, and he paused as if he was wondering if he should even continue the sentence, “scared of it. At first.”

 

“No,” Sansa denied, smiling brightly as she shook her head. It was a lie, but she didn’t want to share her thoughts with him. “I was just surprised. That’s all.”

 

Sandor looked skeptical of her answer, but he didn’t push it. “Okay,” he said slowly.

 

“Can I borrow your shower?” Sansa blurted out all of a sudden, and Sandor’s confusion only grew at that announcement.

 

“Uh, sure,” he told her.

 

Sansa smiled at his answer, and she hurried over to the coffee table to put down the box with the ring in it. She wasn’t going to carry that into the bathroom. As she passed by Sandor to head towards his bathroom, she took him by the arms and planted a kiss on his cheek before hurrying away. Sansa closed the bathroom door behind her, leaving a very confused Sandor in her wake. He was probably wondering why she needed to borrow his shower, but it was already late in the evening. If she planned on staying the night, then she wanted to wash up before it got too late.

 

She put down her purse beside the door before taking off her clothes, including her coat. Setting the water to more hot than warm, Sansa hopped into the shower and closed the door behind herself. She washed her hair, scrubbed down her body, and took the time to shave. They were all things she would have done if she was home, but she wasn’t home. She was at Sandor’s apartment, and he was waiting outside for her, so she tried her best to do everything quickly. When she was done, Sansa cut off the water. She stepped out of the tub and grabbed one of the towels, wrapping it around her body. Taking another one, she scrubbed it over her hair to try and dry it somewhat. As soon as she walked out of the bathroom, she didn’t want to drip water everywhere.

 

Leaving her clothes in the bathroom, she scooped up her purse and wandered through the hallway to Sandor’s bedroom. She had stuffed some of her clothes in his dresser. Sansa took out a pair of panties, a loose exercise bra for sleeping, a pair of cloth shorts, and a spaghetti strap top. Sandor’s apartment was warm, so she didn’t feel the need to grab any thick winter sleeping clothes. She doubted Sandor slept in more than just a t-shirt and boxers, and the warmth seemed to echo of that. Without taking off her towel, she pulled on the panties and shorts, but then she let the towel fall to the floor. Sansa pulled the bra over her head and straightened it out before pulling the top over her head as well. When she turned around to face the door, she found Sandor leaning against the open doorframe of his bedroom, staring at her.

 

She hadn’t closed the door. It hadn’t crossed her mind to close the door, and he must have seen her cross the hallway in the towel. Sansa wondered how long he had been standing there until Sandor slowly pushed himself off of the doorway and crossed the bedroom to stand in front of her. He reached out, curling a single finger in her wet hair and staring at it like it was the most interesting thing in the world to him. Sandor looked like there was something on his mind, but his eyes had grown darker and his hand was fully in her hair now. Whatever was on his mind, he decided not to ask it. Instead, his hand moved to the back of her head, and he pulled Sansa closer as he leaned down to kiss her.

 

The light was off, and the room around them was dark. She tilted her head back as she returned his kiss, a light press of lips to lips that moved slowly but surely. Sansa reached out to wrap her hands around his neck, and Sandor began to take steps backwards away from her, but he pulled her along with him. There was a towel near her feet, and she had to step around it to not trip on it, but he moved at a slow enough pace for her to manage it. Eventually, Sansa felt the back of her knees hit the bed. She pulled away from Sandor, breaking the kiss between them. He stared back at her, unmoving in the darkness, but the smallest semblance of a question glinted in his eyes.

 

Sansa placed her hands on the bed one at a time, scooting herself on top of the mattress. It struck her, then, that she wanted to finish what they had started in the kitchen before Loras had so unexpectedly interrupted them. Maybe she had first thought of spending the night with the idea of sleep in mind. After all, Sansa loved the way Sandor curled against her back while she slept, the way he held her in his arms, and the way he pulled her so close to his body. Now that her parents couldn’t tell her she wasn’t allowed to spend the night with him, the first thing Sansa wanted to do was spend the night with him. There was no risk of getting in trouble. There was just her and him with all the time they wanted to enjoy themselves.

 

As Sansa laid her body down against the bed sheets, they were so smooth and cool to the touch. It sent tingles down her arms and back, and she rubbed her legs together, raising one of them from the bed but leaning it over the other. Sandor’s eyes fell from her face to her body, and then his gaze lowered to her legs. Sansa had begun to develop growing desires over the course of the last few weeks—desires that Sandor mirrored as well, and desires that she wanted to take further than just kissing and touching above the clothes. When he raised his eyes back to hers, Sansa lifted her chin and used her finger to beckon him. She didn’t get a single word out. She didn’t need to. Sandor slowly unbuttoned his shirt and peeled it off, letting it fall to the floor. He had an undershirt on beneath it, and Sansa could see the outline of his muscles through the fabric.

 

When he reached for his belt buckle to carefully unfasten it, Sansa’s heart rate became erratic. Her first thought was sex, but she knew it was only because he was wearing jeans and jeans would be uncomfortable in bed. Still, the mental image came to her head, and Sansa knew she wasn’t ready for that. She would have to tell him in case he got the wrong idea, but so far, Sansa trusted that he knew she wasn’t ready for sex as their first experience together. She watched in silence as Sandor finished undoing his pants, and those fell to the floor as well to join his shirt. Sandor stepped out of them, and he crawled onto the bed above her, hovering like a dark shadow. He wore boxers beneath his jeans, but Sansa knew there was nothing beneath those.

 

She wasn’t sure what to do first, so she ran her hands over his chest. The heat of his flesh radiated through the fabric, warming her palms and fingers. He didn’t lean down to kiss her mouth again, but he did lean down to kiss her. His lips landed on her upper chest, though, to the bare skin above the low plunge of her top. His hand slid down her side, sending tingles throughout her nerves, before he reached the hem of her shirt near her waist. Sandor pushed his hand beneath the fabric, gliding his palm over her tummy, and then higher, upwards along her chest. His fingers brushed the bottom elastic band of her bra, and Sansa opened her mouth to let out a small sound of pleasure as his tongue grazed the round curve at the top of her breast. She arched into his mouth, and Sandor bit down gently with his teeth. Sansa felt a sudden shock jolt through her between her legs, and she parted them wider unconsciously.

 

Sandor kissed a trail along her collarbone before lowering his mouth closer to her breasts again. She expected him to maybe pull down her shirt, but he surprised her. Sandor lowered himself along her body, pushing up her shirt to expose her stomach to the air. He lifted it above her bra, and then his hand enclosed itself around one of her breasts. He squeezed it gently, massaging her through her fabric, and Sansa arched her back further as his lips caught against the bare skin of her chest just a few inches below his hand. As he kissed her and ran his hand over each soft curve of her breasts, Sansa felt a familiar sensation of wetness building up between her legs.

 

His hands stopped their exploring long enough to hook his thumbs beneath her bra and push it up out of the way. Her breasts spilled out, and Sandor didn’t waste a single second close his lips around one of her nipples, taking it into his mouth. She gasped suddenly, surprised with how good it felt, and raked her hands through his hair. Sansa closed her eyes as she felt him flick his tongue repeatedly over her nipple, and then he swirled it slowly around in a circle. Her back practically lifted itself from the bed as his other hand enclosed over her bare breast and squeezed it firmly. Sandor continued to massage her with his hand as he licked her with his tongue and sucked on her with his mouth until she was at a steady pace of moaning from each and every sensation.

 

“More,” Sansa breathed out. “Please, more . . . ”

 

Sandor stopped what he was doing long enough to pull away and look her in the eyes. “More what?” he asked, and Sansa shuddered as his thumb brushed lightly over her nipple. It hardened as a cold tingle passed through her, and Sansa realized that though her shirt and bra were bunched up above her breasts, there was something strongly erotic about not being completely naked. She thought about wanting his mouth on her nipple again, but she also thought about his hand down between her legs, touching her and pleasuring her as she sometimes did to herself.

 

Sansa wasn’t sure what to say, though, so she stared at him with her mouth half open until he moved his body beside hers instead of remaining on top of her. He leaned his head over her chest one more time, flicking his tongue along the peak of her breast before closing his mouth around her nipple and gently sucking on it, and Sansa felt his tongue swirl around it again as his hand slid down her bare stomach towards the waistband of her shorts. His fingers passed below it, and they ran along the edge of her panties. Opening her legs further, Sansa welcomed the contact. Sandor recognized it, and while still sucking on her nipple, he slid his hand lower above her panties until his hand was pressed flush against her with nothing but a thin piece of fabric between them. Sansa felt a single finger of his on either side of her panties slowly graze her just under the fabric and brush against the soft and sensitive flesh there, and she shuddered beneath him. The light moan that escaped her throat must have been all the encouragement Sandor needed from her.

 

He raised his hand a little higher and pressed down with three fingers above her panties on that little sensitive spot Sansa had discovered years ago on herself. Without needing to be told about it, Sandor began to work his fingers in a circle. Sansa felt her body responding, and she started to rock herself slowly against his hand. Every nerve was pleasantly alive, tingling from all of the contact. Laying her head in relaxation against the pillow, Sansa closed her eyes and just enjoyed the feelings and the touches. Eventually, Sandor’s mouth pulled away from her breast, but he placed a small kiss on it before lifting his head. He must have noticed her eyes were closed because he took his hand away from her, and Sansa opened her eyes and lifted her head to protest his decision.

 

Sandor hooked his thumb under the side of her shorts and her panties, pulling them down over her hip. He ran his hand over her stomach to the other side, repeating the motion over there and pulling her shorts and panties even lower. She was nearly exposed, though she didn’t understand why he had to take them off to touch her. Sandor used one hand to curl it under both pieces of clothing, and he pulled them downward as Sansa bent her knees upward and propped her feet against the bed to use them as leverage to raise her bottom up from the bed. Sandor got her shorts and panties to her knees when Sansa leaned up to help him remove them the rest of the way, but Sandor took her by the wrist and stopped her. Sansa turned to look at him in shock, and he just slowly shook his head.

 

“I want you to keep them on,” Sandor murmured to her, and Sansa felt a pulse of pleasure between her legs.

 

Quickly, she nodded her head. “Okay,” she whispered back. She wasn’t sure why he wanted her to keep them on, but Sansa figured she was about to find out, anyway.

 

Sandor gripped his hand around the shorts, squeezing them tight beneath his fingers. Sansa felt the fabric tighten around her knees, and then he pushed it downwards to her body. Her legs were brought so close to her body, too, and Sansa realized she was exposed upwards to him as the shorts kept her legs apart. She felt so exposed that her face flushed with heat, but Sandor came down to capture her lips in a gentle kiss, which eased her mild discomfort. His lips were so tender against hers that she felt the heat leave her face, and then the only thing left was her desire. Her desire to be touched.

 

“Put your hand on your shorts where my hand is,” Sandor whispered against her lips. “Hold them to you.”

 

Sansa followed his directions, wrapping her fingers around her bunched up shorts and panties and squeezing them tight as Sandor let go of them. His hand slid down to the back of her leg, running lower along the back of her thigh. He paused so close near her bottom, but instead of touching her where she wanted him to touch her, Sandor gently massaged his hand along her skin. He stroked his thumb along her flesh, pressing inward with it, and then let his hand slide along her thigh again. Sansa gripped her shorts even tighter in her hand, and surprising herself, she spread her legs a little further.

 

“Touch me, please,” she begged, not even caring that she had to beg. Sandor was being slow and torturous with her on purpose, Sansa thought, and it wasn’t fair. She wanted more, and she didn’t want to wait all night for it.

 

Sandor didn’t tease her any longer like she expected him to do. He lowered his hand between her legs, sliding one finger against her, and Sansa moaned aloud at the pleasant shock it brought her.

 

“Fuck,” Sandor swore low, and he began to work his hand against her. He used slow circular motions at first nearer to the top, and then he dipped his finger lower again, using it to spread her wetness. Sandor moved his head close to her ear, and bit down on her earlobe. “You’re so wet,” he murmured, and he slowly flicked his tongue against the curve of her ear. Sansa breathed quick through her lips as his hand continued to move in its circular motion between her legs. It felt so good, but a part of her wanted more. Sansa couldn’t explain the desire, but she wanted him inside of her. She wanted his finger to slip inside, not just to touch her on the outside. It was a deep yearning that had begun to pool low in her belly with each stroke of his fingers that sent pleasant ripples through her lower body.

 

Turning her head towards his on the bed, Sansa opened her eyes to look over at Sandor. He was staring at her chest, she realized, as her breasts bounced with each rock of her body she made against his hand. A heat surged into her face as she looked at him, and Sandor slowly raised his eyes to hers. He parted his lips slightly, and the tip of his tongue dragged along his upper lip, and Sansa leaned over to press her lips to his for a soft kiss. Sandor returned it with more passion, sliding his tongue into her mouth and pressing against her with more urgency in his hand. Sansa broke away from the kiss to speak against his mouth.

 

“Inside,” she whispered softly. “I want to feel it inside.”

 

Sandor closed the small distance between them to kiss her slowly, just a press of lips to lips. He kissed her again in the same way as she felt his hand position itself differently between her legs. There was a gentle push with only one of his fingers, lower near her entrance, and the slickness made it easy at first, but then there was resistance. Sansa wasn’t sure if it natural resistance or the angle, and Sandor pulled back to look down at her face as he eased his finger in deeper. Sansa felt her mouth open with the slow slide inward, and she arched her back, moaning deep in the back of her throat once it was all the way inside of her.

 

There was no pain at all. Sansa wasn’t sure if she was supposed to feel any, but all she felt was satisfaction. She felt full in a way, but also not full enough. Sansa rocked her body as a strangled noise of pleasure escaped her mouth; his finger stroked the inside of her with the motion of her body, and the shocks throughout her nerves were stronger than before. Sansa gripped even harder onto her shorts, trying to spread her legs further, but the shorts were impeding her. Sandor began a slow thrust of his finger back and forth, and Sansa arched her head backwards, finding all sorts of sounds coming out of her mouth. It felt so good. All of it felt so good.

 

When he suddenly quickened the pace of his finger, Sansa never thought in all her life she could be so vocal during something like this. Her whole lower body shook with each stroke of her inner walls, and she moved her body in tune with his hand. Almost out of nowhere, Sandor sat up on the bed, but he also removed his hand from her.

 

“No,” Sansa whined in protest, but Sandor positioned himself behind her legs. As he grabbed for her shorts and panties, Sansa let go of them. She had to raise her legs straight upward as Sandor pulled them quickly from her body. He threw them aside, and parted her legs, leaving her bare before him. Her face didn’t flush with heat this time, though. She watched with parted lips as Sandor tore off his shirt, and he tossed that aside, too. He stared down at her as if drinking in the vision of her nudity, and then his hand was between her legs again where he was kneeling, and Sansa felt him press the tips of two fingers to her entrance.

 

Her body was still slick with arousal, but it was more difficult this time. There was more resistance than before, and Sansa made a face of discomfort, though it didn’t really hurt as much as ache. Sandor stopped, though, when he saw the look on her face. Instead, he just used the one finger again, and it slid in easily. She watched him this time as he worked his finger inside of her. Sandor slid his free hand over her stomach, pressing down on it, and the pressure felt so good. Sansa began moaning freely as she rocked herself against his hand once more. Then, he did something new with his hand. Sansa felt his finger curl upward as he began to thrust it with more force, and pleasurable shocks within her body grew stronger and overtook her. Her toes curled inward as her lower muscles tightened, and Sansa felt something building up inside of her.

 

Sandor lowered his free hand to the little sensitive spot between her legs just below her curls, and he began to attend to it at the same time, using quick and hard strokes. All of it built up until her nerves all gave way at once, her muscles shaking hard with each strong pulse of pleasure that shot through her body. Her back arched, lifting her chest into the air, as a little light burst behind her eyes when she closed them. Even her shoulders were shaking as she fell loose against the bed, feeling utterly satisfied and worn out. Sansa knew she had hit her peak, though it was ten times stronger than anything she had ever accomplished on her own. Yet, despite that, she still wanted more.

 

Sandor leaned over Sansa, propping himself up against the bed above her. He seemed to read her thoughts because he didn’t just stop. She felt him try again with two fingers, and her body seemed to be more ready to accommodate him on this try. Sansa wrapped her legs around his hips as Sandor managed to slide two of them inside of her, and Sansa gasped loudly. She wrapped each of her arms tight around his shoulders as well, digging her nails in the bare skin of his back. There was a dull ache with him filling her up like this, but it felt good still, and Sansa liked it. Sandor lowered his mouth to hers, capturing her lips in another heated kiss, and he began to thrust his two fingers in a rhythm with her hips.

 

Sansa wanted the explosion again, the sudden clinch of muscles as everything became pure pleasure, and she could have used all of the proper terms she had heard of before, but only one term came to mind when she opened her mouth.

 

“Make me come again,” she whispered against his lips, and Sandor kissed his way along her jaw as he hooked his fingers inside of her like before. His gentle thrusts became harder and quicker, but each muscle of her body tightened up in response again, and Sansa arched her back as she felt everything building up a second time beneath the surface. Sandor lowered his mouth to her neck as she called out at the ceiling, hands clutching sheets and toes curling under as another explosion overtook her body from deep inside where his fingers touched her.

 

She was left shaking in the aftermath, and Sandor continued to thrust in and out of her, eliciting every last shudder and moan he could get out of Sansa until her legs fell from his body because she was unable to hold them up any longer. They both laid there in silence for a moment, not saying anything. Eventually, Sandor took his hand away from her, and he slowly moved off of her body to lie on the bed beside her. Sansa glanced over at him, utterly satisfied and spent, but she noticed he was breathing hard and staring up at the ceiling like he hadn’t gone anywhere.

 

When she looked down at his boxers, she realized why.

 

Sansa had wanted to touch him for a long time, but she had never gotten the courage to do it. She wasn’t sure what had been holding her back, but the desire pumping through her blood made her want to touch him now. Sansa sat upright on the bed, pulling off her top and bra to toss them aside, and then she lay down beside him again and curled up to his side. Sandor wrapped his arm around her back to hold her to him. He appeared content enough on the outside, but Sansa wanted to bring him what he had brought to her. She was also sure he wouldn’t mind.

 

Her hand snaked out across his stomach, and Sandor turned his head to look down at her. Sansa raised her chin to meet his eyes, seeing a questioning look in them. Her hand slid lower, fingers grazing just beneath the waistband of his boxers, and Sandor’s eyes seemed to darken in response. His hand from the arm he had wrapped around her back gripped her arm, and as much as Sansa wanted to drag it out and tease him, she figured maybe another time.

 

She slipped her hand beneath his boxers, but the angle felt awkward and tight, so she removed her hand long enough to pull down at the waistband on one side. Sandor used his free hand to help her push them out of the way, though he didn’t try to take them all the way off. When his hard manhood was revealed to her line of sight in the darkness, Sansa found herself staring at it. She had never seen him like this before. Sansa had felt him through clothing, but not with her hands, and she had certainly never seen him naked. She rested her head against his chest, pressing her body into his side. Her tongue slowly grazed itself along her lips.

 

Sansa reached out for him, closing her fingers around his base. He was firm but supple to the touch, and his skin was hot. Experimentally, she moved her hand upward along his length, and she felt the groan in his throat reverberate through his chest beneath her ear. Encouraged by his response, Sansa began a rhythm with her hand. Sandor gently ran the tips of his fingers up and down along her arm, sending tingles up to her shoulder. He liked it, but Sansa tried to think of what other things she could do to him. It couldn’t have all been up and down, she thought.

 

She experimented further. Sansa curled her fingers tighter, squeezing him as she pumped her hand back and forth along his length, and it elicited a deep groan from within Sandor’s chest. Her curiosity drew her thumb over the tip, where she found a wetness. She felt Sandor’s nerves jump at the touch, so she knew he must have liked that even more. Sansa mimicked his actions from earlier, using her thumb to spread the wetness across his tip. Sandor swore aloud, and she felt him breathe deeper. Lifting her head from his chest, Sansa turned to look at him.

 

“Tell me what you want me to do,” she asked him, and Sandor lifted his head to return her gaze.

 

“Do whatever you want to do,” he told her in a low voice laced with desire. His eyes were heavy and dark, and Sansa watched him as she ran her palm over the tip to get the slickness on her hand, and then she resumed stroking him again. He breathed through his mouth, watching her right back. Sansa saw his tongue slide against his lips, and she pumped her hand faster along his length. Sandor closed his eyes and tilted his head back, his mouth open towards the ceiling as deep and pleasurable sounds echoed from the back of his throat. Sansa wanted to kiss him and drown in them, but her mind thought of something else.

 

She looked down at his manhood again as her hand passed over it, and Sansa thought about taking him into her mouth. It was an erotic thought, and it turned her on just to think of it, but she had never done it before. Sansa had never done this before either, though, so everything was going to be new to her. Curiosity won over hesitation, and Sansa kept stroking him as she scooted her body lower along the side of his. She didn’t know if he noticed it or not, though she was sure he couldn’t have just missed it. Positioning her upper chest just against Sandor’s stomach, Sansa leaned close to him and flicked her tongue along the head of his length.

 

Sandor hissed above her. She felt his hand reach out for her back, and he glided his fingers along her skin in encouragement. Carefully, she lowered her open mouth over the first inch or so of him, and then she closed her lips around him. Sansa sucked on him gently as her hand continued to move up and down along his length, and she felt Sandor thrust his hips upward to meet her. Sansa splayed her free hand against his lower stomach and pressed downward, wanting him to stay still. Sandor moved his hand to her hair, gliding his fingers along her scalp as she resumed to suck and stroke him. She began to move her lips back and forth as well, and with her mouth still around him, Sansa flicked her tongue against his sensitive tip. Sandor shuddered beneath her, and she squeezed his base harder as she moved her hand up and down. It wasn’t much longer after that before Sandor’s hand temporarily clutched in her hair, and she felt the muscles of his stomach tighten beneath her ministrations.

 

“I’m going to come,” Sandor told her, and Sansa wondered what she should do next. It took her a moment to decide to stay instead of pulling away from Sandor, and Sansa mimicked his actions from earlier again by swirling her tongue over the tip as she stroked him. She felt the sudden contractions of his muscles, and without any further warning from his body, Sandor grunted above her as a hot and mildly bitter liquid shot from the tip and into her mouth, filling it up. Sansa almost coughed, but she quickly swallowed it down, not knowing what else to do.

 

She pulled back, then, looking at his manhood as she continued to slowly stroke it a few more times. When she ran her thumb over the head again, Sandor hissed somewhere above her, but it didn’t sound like pleasure, so she pulled her thumb away. Sansa sat up on the bed, looking down at his face. Sandor had one of his hands over his eyes. When he lowered it, he saw her staring at him. Sansa looked away shyly, and she reached out to grab her shorts and panties to slip them back on. She picked up her bra and sleeping shirt next, sliding those back on as well. Sansa didn’t want to lie down beside him completely naked in the bed. She was afraid things might go too far if she did that.

 

When she looked back at him, Sandor had fixed his boxers, but he appeared like he could’ve cared less about putting a shirt back on. Sansa lay back down beside him, and his arm curled around her back again to hold her arm. They were lying sideways across the bed together, and Sansa glanced up at him. He was closer to the pillows than her. She placed her hand on his chest, and Sandor gazed down at her through hazy eyes. He looked sleepy this time.

 

“Can you pass me a pillow?” she asked softly.

 

Sandor turned away from her long enough to grab one. He pushed it close to her head, and Sansa lifted it up as Sandor slid it underneath. Sansa laid her head on one side of it, and Sandor turned onto his side against the bed, resting his head on the pillow as well. His other arm went over her body, and he pulled her closer to him. Sansa leaned forward and gave him a peck on the lips, which Sandor returned with a motion she barely felt.

 

Sansa opened her eyes, but Sandor’s were closed.

 

“Are you falling asleep?” she asked in a whisper, but there was no answer from Sandor, just his steady and slow breathing. She raised her hand to his face to gently touch his jaw with her fingers. Running the back of her fingers along his cheek, Sansa lowered her hand to ball it against her chest as she tilted her head down and closed her eyes. She was sleepy, too, now that she thought about it.

 

She had a question for Sandor, but it could wait for the morning. Right now, she just wanted to lie peacefully in his arms, and it was enough.

 

 


	76. Crawling Out of the Mess You’ve Made

_* * *_

 

As he slowly woke up that morning, Sandor noticed the air about the room was cold. His bare shoulders tingled with the chill as it touched his skin. Underneath the sheet and blankets, though, it was cozy and warm, so Sandor pulled them higher until his shoulders were covered, and then he wrapped his arm around the warm body next to him in the bed. It took him a moment before he realized he was so cold because his feet were hanging off the edge of the bed as well, so he tugged those under the blanket with the rest of his body. He pulled the other person closer to him using his arm, his face pressing into her long hair and the rest of him molding just right against the curves of her body. When he finally opened indolent eyes from the comfort of last night’s rest, Sandor remembered the body beside him belonged to Sansa.

 

It wasn’t that he forgot or thought she was anyone different, but now that he was more awake, the memory of last night came back suddenly into his head. His arm around her body pulled back until his hand rested upon her waist, and he ran it down her shorts to her thighs. Sandor’s hand came back up, pulling the edge of her shorts up and out of the way, and the tips of his fingers pushed under the hem of her panties. He couldn’t touch much from this angle, but his fingers ran slowly across her skin before he pulled back his hand and brought it to the top of the waistband on her shorts. Curling each of his fingers underneath it, Sandor pulled down her shorts and panties until her bottom and thighs were bare. Sansa must have been waking up, for her heard a soft moan escape her mouth and she kicked off both her shorts and panties the rest of the way, letting them fall to the floor at the foot of the bed.

 

Sandor put his hand under her knee, lifting it upward as he urged her onto her stomach against the bed. With her leg bent outward at the knee, he dropped a kiss to her shoulder as his hand snaked between her legs to find the sweet spot in the center. Sansa turned her face into the pillow, which muffled each of the pleasurable sounds from between her lips as his fingers began to work against her. She was already wet, and Sandor closed his eyes while pressing his lower face to her back. He opened his mouth and bit down on the skin, easing two of his fingers inside of her. Sansa lifted her head from the pillow, the sounds from her throat deeper and needier now, and he pumped his hand back in forth in rhythm with her moans.

 

Eventually, she pulled away from his hand and shifted herself on the bed to face him. Sandor wanted to touch her again, but his thoughts fled when Sansa slipped her fingers under the waistband of his boxers and pulled them down out of the way. She wrapped one hand around him, sliding it back and forth to stroke him, and hooked her leg around his hip. He took the opportunity to touch her again, his sleepy mind losing itself in a fervent haze as they pleasured each other to climax. Sansa’s body shook from orgasm as she pressed her face to his chest, the movements of her hand becoming more erratic on him. Sandor stopped the other night after giving her two, but this morning he didn’t want to stop.

 

He rolled them over until Sansa was on her back against the bed and his body was positioned between her legs, and Sansa wrapped her arms around his neck, her fingers running through his hair and over his scalp. Sandor wasn’t thinking straight, and his mind was still half-clouded with sleep, so he took himself in hand and gave himself slow, languorous strokes as he guided himself between her legs. The tip of his length just barely nudged against her slick warmth when Sansa’s hands left his neck to push at his chest.

 

“Wait,” she whispered, “no, I—”

 

Sandor pulled back to open his eyes and look at her, really look at her, before he realized what he was doing and how bad of an idea it was. He didn’t need to be told another word. The one word, _no_ , was enough. Sandor rolled off of her, but he pulled her to him with his arm so she wouldn’t think he was upset with her. What the hell was he thinking, anyway? He wasn’t even wearing a condom. He didn’t have any condoms anywhere. Probably because he hadn’t had sex in a long time, but he’d never had sex before without one. It was a dumb move for that alone. Where was his mind?

 

“I’m sorry—” Sansa began, but Sandor cut her off.

 

“No, don’t apologize,” he murmured, and he shook his head. “That was stupid of me.” Sandor ran his hand over his face, rubbing it good. “I’m still half-asleep.”

 

Her hand came out to tentatively touch his chest, fingers pressing with a light tap against his skin, and Sandor removed his hand from his face to look at her again. Sansa lowered her hand along his chest, and eventually, her fingers made contact on a much different part of his body. She slowly wrapped her hand around him, and Sandor closed his eyes as she began to stroke along his length. Sansa scooted closer to him until his sensitive tip pressed against her lower tummy, and she continued to work her hand on him. When he came, it made a mess between them under the sheets, but Sandor hardly cared. The release was achingly good, and he was so turned on that she let him come on her. It was even better last night when Sansa didn’t pull away from him, swallowing afterwards. Maybe it was because he had a past with strangers, and things like that didn’t happen with strangers. There were rules, and intimacy of this nature didn’t occur.

 

When she removed her hand from him, Sandor pulled her flush against his body despite the mess between them. It felt good to have her in his arms that he didn’t care. He had a bathroom if she wanted to wash up, but he wasn’t going to let her get up just yet. It wasn’t even quite sunlight outside, so Sandor didn’t see the point in getting up himself anytime soon. He wanted to stay there in bed under the sheets for a little longer until sunlight crept through the window and stung his eyes, making him have to get up.

 

“You’re not falling asleep again, are you?” Sansa asked quietly beside him.

 

Sandor suppressed a laugh, which came out in a small huff. “No,” he murmured.

 

“You fell asleep last night . . . ”

 

“You were just that good,” Sandor told her quietly, and when he opened his eyes to look at her, Sansa’s face was flushed pink. The corner of his mouth curled up. “You’re cute when you’re embarrassed.”

 

“Was it . . . was it really that good?” Sansa whispered across the pillow to him, her eyes wide and curious. It was a genuine question, and Sandor would have laughed, but she would have taken it the wrong way.

 

“Yes,” he answered her, and he brought his hand up her back to gently graze his fingers over her shoulder. Last night, Sandor hadn’t wanted to interrupt her by telling her what to do. He had known she didn’t have any prior experience, but if he had lain there and given her instructions, it might have distracted her from just doing what came naturally. Sandor had wanted her to explore on her own, to get a feel for him in her own way. It had all felt so good, too. Maybe she hadn’t had any experience before him, but someone had told her something.

 

“I was nervous,” Sansa admitted softly, sliding her arm around to his back and splaying the fingers of her hand against his skin.

 

“I didn’t notice,” he told her, which was partially a lie. Sandor had noticed her hesitation at first, and then he had noticed it at the end when he warned her of his release. Sansa had taken a moment to debate if she should pull her mouth away from him or not, and that was why he had warned her. She might not have wanted all of that in her mouth, but she had chosen to let him have his release there, and then she had chosen to swallow. It was hot, and it was sexy, and it was also strangely intimate. Then again, it really wasn’t all that strange after all.

 

Sansa pressed her nose to his chest, so that all he could see was her hair. “I love you,” she whispered against his chest.

 

Sandor stilled in her arms.

 

They hadn’t said those words but once to each other, and Sandor had said them first. Sansa had returned them later, but that was all. One time each. They hadn’t said them again since, and Sandor was quiet in response. He wasn’t sure why, but the words were just as terrifying now as they had been the first time around for him. Sansa’s hand stilled on his back, and he felt her pull it away until only her arm rested over his side. Sandor feared she was about to pull away entirely because of his silence, so he did the only thing he knew to do to stop it from happening. He repeated the words, even though they caught in his throat.

 

“I love you, too,” he managed to say, and slowly, Sansa brought her hand down onto his back again. She didn’t say anything else, but her body felt stiff in his arms. Sandor tightened his arm around her, wordlessly begging that she didn’t hold his silence against him, and he felt her loosen up in his crushing embrace and hug him back under the covers. They lay there like that for some time until it seemed as if Sansa had drifted off, and when she hooked her leg around his hip, Sandor reached out for her hip to grasp it with his hand. He realized, then, after not thinking about it for a while that she was still completely bare below her waist.

 

Sandor’s hand slid around onto her bottom, grasping the soft flesh in a light squeeze, and Sansa rocked against him with a little moan in her throat. He ran his hand along her leg, hoisting it up higher, and slipped his hand down to touch her again. She felt so good against him, and he spent the next thirty minutes of bliss bringing her back to another climax, and then another, and by the second one, she had crawled on top of him. By the third one, Sansa protested with a shaking body that she couldn’t handle anymore right now. Reluctantly, Sandor took his hand away from her, and she settled onto the bed beside him before she decided to get up and go wash up in the bathroom.

 

He finished himself off slowly as he heard the water running from the shower while she bathed, imagining everything in there that he couldn’t see with his own two eyes. When Sansa came back into his bedroom, Sandor took his turn in the shower. He returned with just a towel wrapped around his waist, and Sansa was sitting on his bed. She had pulled on a set of casual and loose clothes, her hair a messy tumble of wet tresses. She looked beautiful like that. Sansa smiled at him, and it reached her eyes. There was a hint of natural flush to her cheeks, and she just looked . . . happy.

 

“You’re a goner,” he said suddenly.

 

Sansa’s face went from smiling to an expression of mild shock as she combed her fingers through her hair, stopping halfway down. “What?” she asked, her eyes large and staring at him.

 

“Your parents are going to know exactly what you’ve been doing the moment you walk through that door,” Sandor joked with her as he sat down on the edge of the bed in his towel. Sansa’s eyes grew wider at that. “It’s written all over your face,” he added in amusement, passing his hand in front of his own face as he said it.

 

“No, it’s not,” Sansa said quickly, looking down at her lap. Her hand, however, reached up to touch her cheek with just four fingers as if she were inspecting herself.

 

Sandor laughed. “Sure,” he said. “Deny it.”

 

“There is nothing on my face—”

 

Sandor got up from his edge of the bed and made his way over to Sansa, sitting down beside her. She looked up at him only halfway, lifting her eyes more than her head. “I’m messing with you,” Sandor told her, looking her straight in the eyes, but he couldn’t help the small smile that curled up the corner of his lips.

 

Sansa stared back at him wordlessly, so Sandor leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers. It was a gentle and languorous kiss, and when he pulled back from her, Sansa looked like she had a question on the tip of her tongue.

 

“Can you do something for me?” she asked him, looking him straight in the eyes.

 

“Do what?” Sandor asked right back.

 

“Can you drive me by my Uncle Brynden’s house before you drop me off back at home?”

 

Sandor furrowed his brow slightly. “Where does your uncle live?”

 

Sansa’s face fell. “Pretty far away,” she said.

 

“How far?”

 

“An hour and a half or so, I think.”

 

 _That is far_ , he thought. “I’ve got work today,” Sandor told her. “I don’t think I’ll have time.”

 

“What about tomorrow?” she asked him.

 

“I work the rest of the week,” Sandor said, feeling bad about it. That was three hours of driving, though, and he didn’t know how much time she planned on staying there once he drove her there.

 

Sansa’s face fell, and she glanced down at her lap.

 

Sandor sighed.

 

He reached out, taking her by the chin and raising her head upward again. Sansa looked like she was about to cry. Sandor couldn’t imagine what would bring about a look like that on her face, so he decided to ask.

 

“Why?” he inquired in a soft voice. “What’s wrong?”

 

“Arya hasn’t been answering her phone,” Sansa revealed, “and her texts sound funny. I just wanted to go over there and see her for myself to make sure she’s all right.”

 

Sandor furrowed his brow. It sounded strange, but it could have been anything. Arya was a teenage girl in trouble with her parents. She could have been acting differently just because she was mad. It sounded like a typical teenager to him, so he shook his head. “What could be wrong with her?”

 

“I don’t know,” Sansa said quietly, shrugging her shoulders at his question. “But she forgot about my birthday, and Arya _never_ forgets about my birthdays. She’s never missed one.”

 

He had to think about it, but maybe he could swing over to her uncle’s place just to check on Arya and let Sansa know everything was fine. Sandor didn’t have the time to take Sansa all the way out there to see her sister, though. Knowing the two of them, once they got together they would be inseparable for hours.

 

“How about you give me your uncle’s address, and if I get a moment, I’ll swing by and check on her for you?” Sandor suggested. It seemed to be the right thing to say because Sansa’s face suddenly brightened up as she grinned at him, and then she threw her arms around his neck for a tight hug.

 

“Oh, thank you,” Sansa told him. “Mum and Dad think it’s nothing, but I just want to know she’s okay, that’s all.”

 

Sandor thought she was overreacting just a little, but if it made her feel better, then he would do it. He pulled away from her hug. “Well, I’ve got to get some clothes on,” he said, getting up from the bed, “and you ought to be getting home. Do you want to write it down now before I take you back?”

 

“Yes,” Sansa said, and she launched off the bed to grab her purse. She pulled out a little piece of paper, and then she glanced around his bedroom. “Do you have a pen?”

 

“In the kitchen by the calendar,” Sandor told her.

 

As she hurried out of his room, Sandor pulled on fresh clothes. He was in the middle of putting on a shirt when she came back to his room with the note in hand. Sansa held it out to him, and he took it, pocketing the address. Sandor slipped on a pair of boots and grabbed his keys as Sansa gathered her things, and he walked her down to his car before he drove her home. It was a quiet ride, but not an unpleasant one, and Sansa smiled at him and kissed his cheek before she ran across the lawn to the front door of her house.

 

Sandor watched her disappear inside as always, and then he backed the car out of the driveway and pulled off. The highways had begun to get congested with early traffic, but Sandor remembered the address in his pocket at one of the red lights. He fished it out and unfolded the small piece of paper, staring at it. The location was maybe a little over an hour out of the city, though he wasn’t entirely familiar with the area. Still, if it made him late for work, Sandor could always call in and warn them that he would be late. He was the boss, after all.

 

Instead of heading back to his apartment, Sandor took the route out of the city. He drove past the streets and familiar sights until the concrete jungle slowly gave way to natural scenery in the middle of winter. There were some traces of snow still here or there, but not too much. The roads were drivable, and there was no ice. Sandor turned on the radio for company as he followed the highway out to the edge of Kingswood Forest. Surrounding the forest itself was a lot of privately owned land, and Sandor only knew the area because Renly had a nice home out here away from the urban sprawl of Kingsland.

 

Sansa wrote down the roads leading to her uncle’s house off of the highway, and Sandor followed each of them until they led him down onto a patchy dirt road in the forest. He drove until he saw a large cabin home looming through the thicket of trees ahead of him. As he slowed down the vehicle, Sandor pulled up into an empty yard with no other cars in sight. Everything was quiet, and he suspected that no one was home right now.

 

It wasn’t until after Sandor had shut his car door and turned to face the house that he noticed it.

 

The front door was cracked open, swaying on its hinge in the breeze.

 

A sense of danger flooded his system immediately, and Sandor reopened his car door to grab for the baseball bat behind the driver seat. He didn’t walk around with weapons for obvious reasons, but he kept a baseball bat in his car because it was a safety precaution for him in case he ever needed it. With no car in the yard and an open door swinging in the breeze, now looked like one of those times.

 

He approached the house carefully with the bat in hand. None of the windows were open, nor were their curtains drew back. He didn’t hear a sound or see a face. Once Sandor reached the front door, he slowly pushed it open using the edge of the bat instead of the fingers on his hand. The uneasy possibility of this being a crime scene made him not want to leave his prints anywhere, and Sandor was mindful not to touch anything.

 

With his head not even a few inches past the doorway, Sandor turned left and saw a modern black arrow with neon feathers embedded in the wall two inches from the doorframe. He stared at it, his mouth open, before he looked forward again. As his gaze passed over the whole space of the living room, he noticed other black arrows embedded into the walls. They each followed a pattern of overthrown furniture and knocked over items that were scattered across the floor. It was a mess inside of the house. It looked like someone had come in and ransacked the place, but Sandor knew, judging by the arrow path that followed the mess, that the homeowner was defending himself against an intruder.

 

As strange as the situation appeared to be at first glance, Sandor had to make a decision to go further and check things out or leave. After a moment of internal debate, he took another step forward into the house. Sandor cautiously inspected each room on the first floor, finding nothing out of the ordinary. Everything in that direction of the house looked neat and untouched, so Sandor went back the way he came and glanced up at the staircase.

 

At some point during his ascension up the stairs, he nearly fell over a hole in one of the steps. Sandor grabbed the banister to steady himself and glanced down. The steps at his feet were blown into with a gun blast. Sandor stared at it for a moment, and then he looked up again. There was another blast in the staircase going up. The man went from using a bow and arrow to firing with a shotgun. Sandor thought about going further, and he thought about calling out, but all he had was a baseball bat and he was not going up against someone with a shotgun if that man was still in the house.

 

As quickly as possible, Sandor got out of the house. Once he made it back to his car, he tossed the baseball bat into the passenger seat and pulled his phone out of his pocket, searching through his call history. Arya had called him once or twice in regards to camp months ago. Sandor never erased his phone history, so maybe it was still in there. Once he found what he thought was it, Sandor hit the dial button and brought the phone to his ear.

 

It rang, and then it rang some more. The steady ring was discouraging. When it hit voicemail without a greeting, Sandor hung up the phone.

 

After a minute or two of waiting, Sandor received a text. He opened it up, and the text read, “ _Who is this?_ ”

 

Sandor thought about it for a moment, and then he answer with a false name and shortened text.

 

“ _Jeyne. Where r u?_ ”

 

He figured teens typed like that, and it would be more believable that way. He received another text rather quick, and it said, “ _I’m at uncle b’s. Got in trouble. It sucks. You?_ ”

 

Sandor lifted his eyes back to the house. No one was here. He was willing to bet on it, but not risk his life on it. Looking back down at the phone, he stared at the text.

 

Who was answering him?

 

He sent a text back, which said, “ _Can I come over?_ ”

 

The answer came fast, telling him, “ _No, we’re out hunting. Got 2 go. Bye._ ”

 

Sandor stared down at the received text. The sense of danger turned into one of alarm, and he quickly got into his vehicle and shut the door. Sandor dialed the pub as he pulled out of the driveway, and Allard answered the phone.

 

“Clegane’s Keep,” said Allard. “How may I help you?”

 

“I need you to cover me for today,” Sandor told him.

 

“Sandor, I can’t. You know I’ve already got—”

 

“I’ll pay you double for today if you just cover me,” Sandor said, cutting him off.

 

“Double?” Allard asked, sounding intrigued.

 

“Double.”

 

“For each hour? Stay until close?”

 

“Yes,” Sandor answered through gritted teeth.

 

“Double and a half,” Allard proposed.

 

“Done.”

 

“Okay, boss,” Allard said in a chipper voice this time. “I’ve got you covered.”

 

Sandor hung up the phone as he drove back out onto the main highway. It had been so long since he had been out this way that he had to try and remember the directions, but everything began to look familiar as he followed the roads from his memory. What were the chances he would even be out here on the weekend? They were slim, but they were also worth a shot. There was only one person who could answer the questions that Sandor had, even if it was the last person in the world that he wanted to ask help from.

 

The woodland manse was just as extravagant as the last time he saw it, and there was a car parked out in the driveway. Sandor pulled up behind it and parked his own vehicle. As he exited his car and closed the door, the front doorway to the manse opened up. He must have been seen coming up from the road through one of the windows. Sandor was lucky, though. The place wasn’t shut up for the weekend. Someone was here, and it was just the person he had come to see.

 

Renly stood there in his doorway in a black robe with yellow slippers on his feet, and he eyed Sandor with suspicion as Sandor approached him. He had chosen to come out here because Renly used to spend his weekends out here more often than not. It was Renly’s weekend home, so the chances of Sandor finding him out here today had been good chances. Sandor paused a few feet away from Renly, wondering why he came here instead of just calling the police. The police wouldn’t know anything, though, and they wouldn’t get anything done in time. Arya was missing. Her uncle was missing, too. Someone had her, and Sandor had no idea why or who. For all he knew, it could have been random. If it was random, there was no time to waste.

 

“You’re a strange guest to see unannounced,” Renly commented, looking Sandor up and down slowly. “What brings you out here?” he asked next, cocking an eyebrow. “I’m surprised you remembered the way.”

 

“Who in Kingsland would kidnap a sixteen-year-old girl?” Sandor blurted out.

 

Renly raised both eyebrows at Sandor’s sudden question. “Well, you certainly don’t waste time, I’ll give you that,” Renly said. “What brings this about?”

 

“Answer the question,” Sandor said. “Who in Kingsland would kidnap a sixteen-year-old girl?”

 

Renly was quiet as he stared over at Sandor. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, crossing an arm over his chest. Sandor realized Renly’s other hand was holding a short clear glass that was only a quarter full of amber colored liquid. “Not many,” Renly answered nonchalantly, “but that depends. Money or pleasure?”

 

“Not money,” Sandor said quickly. It definitely wasn’t money. “A game, or . . . pleasure.” His skin crawled just saying it.

 

“That certainly shortens the list,” Renly said, taking a sip from his glass. “Most of them are locked away, though.”

 

“Most of them?”

 

“Well,” Renly said, shrugging his shoulders, “Ramsay Bolton is still out thanks to that prick of a lawyer of his—”

 

Sandor narrowed his eyes, tilting his head to the side. “I thought you had a clean up crew for that sort of thing.”

 

“I did,” Renly said tersely, glaring at Sandor as he lowered his glass, “but Oberyn refuses to do anything. He’s been tracking Ramsay ever since his release and saying there isn’t an opening—”

 

“Tracking him?” Sandor asked, cutting Renly off. “Where to?”

 

“His old home on Dreadfort Lane,” Renly answered him, though there was reluctance in his voice. “That’s one location. Oberyn says there is another. A cabin in the woods. Ramsay used to keep some of his victims there in the past for . . . ” Renly paused, and Sandor could tell, despite all of his nonchalance, that the idea of Ramsay’s side activities bothered even Renly. “Hunting trips,” Renly finished, “with them.”

 

 _No_ , Sandor remembered the text telling him, _we’re out hunting_.

 

A chill ran down his spine.

 

“Take me there,” Sandor told him immediately.

 

Renly raised his eyes, staring agape at Sandor. “Are you mad?” he asked. “I’m not taking you out to see Ramsay fucking Bol—”

 

Sandor stepped closer, invading Renly’s personal space and causing the other man to back up into the door. “You threatened me to get me to do a fucking job for you, and I did it,” Sandor told the man quietly, “and now Arya Stark is missing along with her uncle and his house has been turned upside down by an intruder. Ramsay Bolton is on the loose because of you and me, so get your shit together, put on some fucking clothes, grab whatever guns you have here, and take me to his fucking cabin right _now_.”

 

Renly stared up at Sandor, and despite the strength of his expression, Sandor could see real fear behind his eyes.

 

“You can wait in the car for all I care,” Sandor said, “but if he has her, I can’t just sit around and do nothing.”

 

“Let me call Loras—” Renly tried to reason with him, but Sandor shook his head.

 

“There’s no time,” Sandor cut him off. “They’re already on a hunting trip.”

 

“What?” Renly asked, his voice faltering. Sandor didn’t have time to argue, so he pulled up the text for Renly to see it, and then he held up his phone in Renly’s face. Renly stared at the message on the screen, his mouth slowly falling open in shock. Sandor pulled his phone away and tucked it back into his pocket, and Renly raised his eyes to Sandor’s face.

 

“Get your guns,” Sandor said to Renly one last time, “and make sure they’re fucking loaded.”

 

 


	77. Give My Gun Away When It’s Loaded

_* * *_

 

Arya sat at the table this time with her hands tied together like every other time before. She tried her best to cut her food and eat it, but she had to take moments to still her hands from shaking before she lifted them from the table. It wouldn’t be good if Ramsay saw her hands shaking, and she didn’t want to give anything away for him to see. He had just told her an hour ago that someone was coming by today, and Arya could only guess that it was the person who had wanted her sister in the first place. Whether it was the person himself or a messenger, Arya didn’t know. She ate her food as steadily as possible, though, and she tried not to let her hands shake.

 

When she was finished, she picked up her plate as Ramsay had allowed her do numerous times before and walked into the kitchen with it to clean up. Ramsay didn’t like cleaning up after her, so when Arya had begun to say she didn’t mind doing it, he began to let her do it. This time, before Arya scrubbed the plate and utensils clean, she walked over to the cabinet where she had hidden the steak knife and tucked it into her pants underneath her shirt. She then walked calmly over to the sink and washed up the plate, fork, and butter knife from her meal. Drying them off with the kitchen towel, she placed them in the drainer. Ramsay didn’t like her poking around the kitchen, so she didn’t put things away or touch the cabinets and drawers.

 

He led her back to the bedroom, tying her to the bed instead of handcuffing her. After her bleeding wrist, he had gotten angry with her. Ramsay had accused her of trying to escape, but Arya insisted she had rolled off the bed in her sleep and injured herself because of the metal. Ramsay had struck her once across the face with his hand, but when Arya didn’t break down, didn’t cry her eyes out, and didn’t admit to everything, he calmed down. Two days later, he stopped using the handcuffs and started to tie her using only rope. Arya thanked him quietly, but he never said a word about it.

 

Ramsay pulled out a piece of cloth after tying her to the headboard of the bed. Arya panicked inside, and then he wrapped the thing around her eyes to make it where she couldn’t see anything. Her heart was pounding madly inside of her chest, but Arya was glad Ramsay didn’t notice it. He left the room after that, closing the door behind him.

 

She knew she had to get out, and she had to get out now. Arya struggled with trying to twist herself to reach the knife. It was in her waistband, and her hands were both tied to the headboard. Rope was better than handcuffs because Arya could cut through rope, but Arya couldn’t cut through metal. The downside was Ramsay only used to handcuff one hand, but he tied both of them with the rope. It was a huge disadvantage. Arya couldn’t twist herself in a certain way without injuring herself. When she bent herself once, the knife poked against her skin and stung, and Arya realized the angle wasn’t right. She wasn’t going to accidentally stab her own self with the knife, so she had to be careful trying to get to it. It was hard, though, but she couldn’t give up.

 

Arya heard noises outside of her door, so she had to stop for now and lie still on the bed. The door opened up, and Arya had to steady her breathing. She heard two separate pairs of footsteps enter the room. One paused not long past the door, but the other pair kept walking towards the bed. They stopped at last not far from Arya beside the edge of the bed, and in her head she told herself to breathe evenly.

 

 _Don’t panic_ , Arya thought to herself. _Don’t panic_. _Don’t panic_.

 

The person stepped away from the bed back to the other person near the door. She heard the door creak to an almost close, but it was left cracked open. The voices were just whispers to Arya’s ears, but she strained herself to hear them.

 

“What the hell is this?” the first voice whispered, sounding calm, but there was a suggestion underneath the surface of unhappiness.

 

“What do you mean ‘what the hell is this?’” Ramsay shot back, and in her mind’s eye Arya imagined him gesturing towards the bed with both of his arms. “This is the girl. The girl he asked for—”

 

“This is _not_ the girl,” the first voice answered him. The voice sounded so familiar to Arya. She scrunched her nose as if it might help her to remember, even though it didn’t help her to remember anything. “Sansa Stark is a redhead, very tall. This girl has brown hair, and she is very short.”

 

“I wasn’t told anything about _red_ hair—”

 

“What do you expect him to do with the wrong girl?” the first person interrupted again. “He needs Sansa Stark. Sansa Stark will get him Sandor Clegane in his pocket. Sandor Clegane in his pocket will get him Renly’s head on a platter. This is the wrong bargaining chip. He won’t get anything with her.”

 

“She said her name was _Sansa_ —”

 

“Oh, did she now?” the first man taunted lightly. “It looks like she lied to you. You do know people are capable of doing that, don’t you?”

 

“You watch your—”

 

“I don’t have to watch anything,” the man replied in a sour voice. “If it weren’t for me, you’d still be in prison. Remember that, Ramsay. You need my counsel, so don’t presume to tell me what to do or else I’ll revoke it.”

 

There was a long silence between them.

 

“What can I do?” Ramsay asked. “I can still get the right girl, just tell me—”

 

“No,” the first man said quickly, cutting him off. “Someone else will take care of it. Don’t worry your pretty little head over it.”

 

“What am I supposed to do with this one?”

 

There was another moment of silence.

 

“I don’t care,” the first man told him nonchalantly, and Arya’s heart began to beat wildly inside of her ribcage again. It pounded so hard it was painful, and she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. “Fuck her, kill her. Just make sure she doesn’t show up where anyone can find her. Hide the body, and hide it well.”

 

 _No_ , Arya thought madly. _No, no, no . . ._

 

“Are these the boss’s orders?”

 

“He doesn’t care what you do with the wrong girl, only what you do with the _right_ girl,” the man answered him. “This is the wrong girl, so get rid of her.”

 

Arya struggled against her bonds again, bending her body to try and reach the knife. They weren’t paying any attention to her during their conversation, so she had to do it now while she had a chance before the other man left the house and left her alone with Ramsay Bolton. Arya blocked out all of the thoughts of what Ramsay might do to her once he left and focused on getting out of there alive and in one piece. As she fought against her bonds to either escape them or reach the knife in her waistband, the conversation continued on in the background.

 

“Am I still getting paid?” Ramsay asked the other man.

 

“My, my, aren’t you greedy.”

 

“I got the girl,” Ramsay hissed. “Like I was _told_ to do. It’s not my fault I wasn’t given a proper description and only a name. She was the only Stark girl I ever saw over there—”

 

“We’ll work something out, I’m sure,” the first man replied in his sly voice. After another moment of silence, he added, “Follow me. We’ll discuss this further.”

 

Arya heard their footsteps retreating away from the room. She wasn’t sure how long she fought with the rope around her wrists. It had been longer than thirty minutes, and she still hadn’t gotten anywhere. There were hot tears stinging at the back of her eyes, the blindfold soaking up the ones that managed to escape through her lashes. Arya wiggled enough that she managed to get the knife loose from her pants. It fell onto the bed, and Arya used her body to scoot it upwards along the mattress. When it got close enough to the pillows, Arya strained herself against the bonds to grab the knife with her teeth.

 

Scooting her body upward into a sitting position, Arya grabbed the knife from her mouth. She gripped it hard and began to saw against her bonds. It took a lot longer than she thought it might take because the angle was awkward and she couldn’t use the right amount of force on it. Still, they never came back to the room, and Arya continued to saw and saw at the ropes until they finally got thin enough that she was able to break them by sheer force.

 

Jubilation flooded throughout her veins like a wave of relief, and Arya pulled the blindfold off of her eyes. She slid off the bed as quietly as possible, holding the knife in her left hand with a vice grip, and slowly approached the ajar bedroom door. The faintest stream of faded light poured in through the crack, but it wasn’t much. The room was almost pitch black, and outside of it, there wasn’t enough light to give Arya a good view of anything.

 

She heard the soft sound of footsteps just outside in the hallway.

 

Quickly, Arya darted behind the opposite side of the door to hide. She held the knife upward and out, firm in her grip, ready to use it however she needed to use it to survive. If she ended up killing a man, so be it. _So be it_ , she told herself. Arya could barely hear the footsteps over the pounding of her own heart in her ears, but she braced herself for Ramsay to come through the doorway for her at any moment. He thought she would be an easy toy for him to play with, but he was dead wrong if he thought that.

 

It seemed as if time slowed to a crawl as the door slowly began to creak outward towards her body as it was opened up. Arya could see the dark looming shadow of Ramsay’s body as it sprawled across the bed while light hit him from behind, making him seem like a towering giant. Arya inched closer towards the edge of the door. Any moment now, he would turn and look for her. Any moment now, he would turn around . . .

 

Arya saw his shadow move forward into the room, even though she couldn’t see his body just yet. She had to startle him to get him to turn around, so she kicked at the door and sent it flying almost to a close, temporarily blocking out most of the light. He whirled around in the darkness to face her, though he couldn’t see her, and Arya swung her arm downwards until she felt the knife pierce his flesh in a way that made her sick to her stomach. She could feel the soft tissue giving way to the knife. She could feel it sinking into his chest. She could feel the fear trembling in her nerves and the victory rushing through her veins all at once, and she could hear the unexpected gasp he released that caught on itself halfway through like a gush of liquid cut it off.

 

And then, gradually, the door began to creak its way open again.

 

He stumbled, and Arya instinctively backed away from him, forgetting all about the knife in his chest. Too afraid to pull it out, she left it behind as she took a step back from him. His knees collided with the floor, dropping him to a kneeling position in front of her. He reached up to grab the knife, closing his hand around it but not attempting to pull it out. Arya furrowed her brow, realizing that something was wrong as a sinking feeling developed in the pit of her stomach. Something was very wrong. The door creaked opened further. He was too big. Too big to be Ramsay. Ramsay was smaller. Ramsay was shorter. Ramsay was . . .

 

The light fell on his shoulder before it fell on his face, but his face was in shadow and no longer in the darkness. Arya recognized him too late, though, and now the gasp was hers.

 

“No,” she whispered, “no, this isn’t right. This isn’t—”

 

Sandor tried to breathe, but his breath caught again. The knife protruded from his chest, his hand wrapped weakly around the handle. The light hit his face, and he looked up at Arya, shock and recognition dawning in his eyes.

 

“No, no, _no_ ,” Arya repeated, and she reached forward for him, wanting to help. Sandor leaned away from her, though, looking ill. With a single swaying motion, he lost his balance and toppled backwards to the floor as his hand left the handle of the knife.

 

Arya quickly dropped to her knees beside him, her hands pressing down around the protruding blade. She didn’t know what to do with it. Was it even safe to take it out, or was she supposed to leave it there? What if Ramsay came through the door next time, and she just left it embedded there in Sandor’s chest? Both of them would be dead, then. Ramsay would see to that.

 

“Take . . . knife . . . ” Sandor managed to breathe out more than speak out, and Arya looked down at his face. She couldn’t ask him to repeat that. She knew what he had just said, but she was terrified to do it. He tried to lift his hand from the floor, so Arya wasted no time. She wrapped both hands around the knife and yanked it out fast.

 

The sound was sickening. The sensation beneath her hands was sickening. Arya did the only thing next she knew to do. Apply pressure to the wound. It was soft and gooey with blood, but Arya pressed her right hand down hard over the gash in his chest, and Sandor quaked beneath her hand. She couldn’t imagine how painful it was for him, and she wanted to help get him out of there. He must have come for her, but how did he know? Arya didn’t care. Sandor had come to help her escape from a serial killer, and she had stabbed him in the chest.

 

Before Arya could think of what to do next, a pair of arms snatched her sides from behind and hoisted her up from the floor.

 

“You thought you were _so_ fucking smart,” Ramsay hissed in her ear. “Well, guess what—”

 

Arya didn’t have to guess what because she gripped the knife hard in her hand and swung the pointed tip of the blade right into Ramsay Bolton’s side.

 

His inhuman screech filled the room, and he let go of her. Arya yanked the knife out, taking it with her this time, and she ran left, but Ramsay reached out and snatched her arm. Arya turned around and kicked at him, causing him to let go of her, and then she jumped onto the bed because it was the nearest thing to give her leverage against him. Ramsay came after her, climbing onto the bed arms first, and Arya took the opportunity to jump onto his back, wrapping one arm firmly around his neck to cut off his air supply as she raised the other one into the air and brought it down suddenly right into his back.

 

Arya wasn’t sure how many times she stabbed him. She kept stabbing him even after he stopped shrieking. She kept stabbing him even after they sunk down to the floor together. She kept stabbing him even when there were tears blurring her vision, and she kept stabbing him even when her chest shook with loud sobs after everything she had been through because of this _monster_ —

 

She only stopped when a hand laid itself on her arm, gripping hard.

 

“Enough,” he rasped. “He’s dead . . . ”

 

Arya turned to look at him, still gripping the knife tight in her fist as it sat in Ramsay’s back. His body was limp beneath her, but Arya didn’t know if he was dead or not, even if Sandor said so.

 

“You’re bleeding,” Arya said dumbly, staring at his mouth. Blood trickled down the corner of Sandor’s lip onto his chin. Arya didn’t think that was a good sign. He hadn’t been hit in the face with anything, only stabbed in the chest, and if there was blood coming out of his mouth . . .

 

“Call . . . help . . . ” he rasped again, and his hand fell down from her arm to land against the floor. He was lying sideways upon his shoulder as he faced her, but his head fell down to hit the floor with a quiet thump to join his hand. Slowly, Sandor’s eyes fluttered to a close. Arya didn’t know how to call for help except with a phone. She needed to find a phone. Arya ripped the knife from Ramsay’s back, holding onto it as she began to search through Ramsay’s pockets for a phone. When she couldn’t find one, Arya pushed herself onto her feet and darted past the bedroom door through the house to look for one.

 

There wasn’t a single phone in sight, and Arya didn’t want to waste any time, so she burst through the front door with the knife in grip. It was nighttime outside, a dark navy blue blanket speckled with silver holes hanging over the world. Everything was illuminated under the glow of a waxing moon. Blood covered her hands from fingers to palms in nasty smears of red that looked black under the night’s coloring.

 

She froze immediately, gaping at the sight before her.

 

Arya was standing in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by enormously tall trees in the center of an open grassy field under a clear night sky, which shed light on everything before her for about fifty or sixty yards.

 

There was no city. There were no neighbors. Darting her head in every direction, she saw no cars either. Sandor was going to die in that godforsaken house if she didn’t find help for him soon, and the thought brought new tears to her eyes. Arya began to run towards the trees, and that was when she caught the attention of someone else on the grounds.

 

“Hey, stop!” a voice suddenly called out, and Arya heard his footsteps take off running towards her.

 

She glanced back for only a moment to see the man’s silhouette under the moon, and then she faced forward again and began to run with newfound vigor in her legs. Arya wasn’t going to let him catch her, not when she had gotten this far. She had gotten this far. She was going to get out of here. She was going to get _out_.

 

 _Swift as a deer_ , she chanted in her head. It was one of those motivational speeches Syrio Forel gave at Crossroads Camp during training. Arya remembered it now when she needed it the most. _Quiet as a shadow_. _Fear cuts deeper than swords_.

 

Arya heard his footsteps catching up with her, but she kept running. She was almost at the trees.

 

 _Quick as a snake_ , Arya chanted. _Calm as still water_. _Fear cuts deeper than swords_.

 

She reached the trees at last, diving into the steep incline of the land, the small branches and twigs whacking her face and scratching her skin. Not long after she swept into the trees, she heard the man behind her dive into them as well.

 

 _Strong as a bear_ , she continued to chant in her head. _Fierce as a wolverine_. _Fear cuts deeper than swords_.

 

Arya kept running, refusing to look back. She turned a sharp right into the trees. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she spotted the log before she tripped over it. Arya jumped over the offending blockage, her heart rate high and her muscles burning from all of her exertion.

 

She reached another incline and slid down it, dragging leaves and dirt with her. It scratched up her legs, but she could hear the man behind her still. He must have seen the log, jumping over it as well, which meant she hadn’t lost him as she hoped she had. All the same, she couldn’t give up. She couldn’t just stop. She had to keep running.

 

 _The man who fears losing has already lost_ , Arya told herself. _Fear cuts deeper than swords_.

 

A gunshot rang out in the darkness, deafening Arya’s ears.

 

The whole world slowed to a crawl. Arya’s vision blurred and darkened before her, and she felt her body give out beneath her. It wasn’t just her legs, though. It was as if a shockwave had caused everything to shut down all at once, and she felt herself hit the ground knees first. Her hand opened, dropping the knife, and then her palms caught on the ground. She barely felt the pain. Every part of her body felt numb, and she barely felt the ground, even though her knees and hands had hit it so suddenly.

 

Arya wondered if this was what dying felt like, slow and peaceful.

 

She heard a voice above her. Hands grabbed at her body, turning her over on the ground and pulling her up. Arya registered mildly that she was in someone’s lap, and if she blinked just right, she could make out the bright stars just above the forest canopy high over her head. Arya stared at them, mesmerized by the beautiful sight.

 

A dark shadow blocked them out.

 

Slowly, Arya blinked at it, hoping it would go away, but it stubbornly stayed in place. Fingers tapped against her face, she thought, but she couldn’t feel the hand. Somehow, though, she knew it was there. The dark shadow leaned closer, and Arya squinted at it.

 

“Arya,” the voice said, sounding so far away. “Arya . . . ”

 

“Do I know you?” she asked quietly.

 

The figure got up from the ground, leaving her there. Arya watched as he tucked a gun into his pants, and then he bent over and scooped her up into his arms. Finally, she tilted her head towards him and received a good view of his face under the moonlight. _Renly_ , she thought. She knew him. He was the brother of her father’s best friend . . .

 

“Sandor,” Arya managed to say, but her words began to sound slurred to her own ears. She lifted a hand, pointing out in the direction of the house. “In . . . the house . . . ”

 

Renly glanced up from looking at her to follow the direction of her hand. Arya dropped her arm back down, feeling too tired to continue holding it up for him. She only hoped he knew what she meant and that he called for help to get to Sandor on time. Maybe her time was up, but maybe Sandor would be okay. Maybe, just maybe.

 

Her eyes slowly drifted to a close as the feeling of sleep and numbness washed over her like a wave from the sea.

 

 _Swift as a deer_ . . .

 

Her arm hung limply in the air, dangling from her body.

 

_Quiet as a shadow . . ._

 

Her head rolled to the side, falling away from Renly’s shoulder.

 

 _Fear cuts deeper than swords_ . . .

 

It was her last thought as blackness swallowed everything whole.

 

 


	78. Down Corridors through Automatic Doors

_* * *_

 

The darkness gave way to a small stream of light through a set of white blinds, and Arya registered the weight of an arm around her middle. Her entire body ached, and her mind was heavy with exhaustion. She raised her hand, only to see wires and tubes attached to it, and then she glanced upward to catch sight of the IV bag hanging on a metal post beside the bed. Arya knew immediately that this was a hospital and that she was safe, and the sheets and blanket tucked around her waist were heavy and prevented her from sitting up straight away. She was okay with lying still, though. Her body refused the idea of moving, anyway, and the steady beeping from the machine was a peaceful background noise.

 

Arya’s eyes drifted towards a close again, and then she breathed in suddenly as she squeezed them tightly shut before reopening them. Turning her head to the left, she looked at the person beside her in the hospital bed. Arya recognized the auburn hair before she recognized anything else, and she felt a small smile curl upwards at the corner of her mouth. She wouldn’t have expected to awaken with her sister beside her, but it was a pleasant way to wake up after everything that had happened to her. Arya took in a deep breath, released it, and called out her sister’s name.

 

“Sansa,” she whispered, not wanting to startle her. Sansa stirred beside her on the bed, slowly raising her head from the pillow at the sound of her name. Her expression was wrinkled partly with sleep and partly with confusion, and her long red hair was a tangled mess like it hadn’t been brushed in days, but Arya couldn’t be sure how much time had passed since she had blacked out. She had been running through the forest in a desperate need to find help for Sandor, for Sandor . . .

 

“You’re awake,” Sansa suddenly said with widened eyes, stating the obvious, which normally Arya would pick on her for, but not today. The happy gleam in Sansa’s eyes was enough to let it pass without comment, and besides, making jokes was the last thing on Arya’s mind. Her panic had begun to return to her as she remembered everything, and she blurted out the first thing on her mind that she needed an answer to now or she would never calm the frantic beating of her heart for all long as she was awake today, or maybe ever.

 

“Sandor,” Arya said, her throat dry and her voice scratchy, “where is he?”

 

The look of happiness fell from Sansa’s face, and a spike of fear embedded itself into Arya’s heart.

 

“He’s on another floor,” Sansa said softly, lowering her voice to a whisper. “He had to go in for surgery or something like that, I think, but he’s in recovery.”

 

“He’s alive,” Arya breathed out, and relief flooded her heart. Her head relaxed back into the pillow, and Arya closed her eyes. “I thought I had killed him . . . ”

 

“What do you mean?” Sansa asked, and Arya picked up on the confusion in her sister’s voice. Arya reopened her eyes, turning her head back towards Sansa.

 

“I stabbed him,” Arya admitted to her without fear. “I thought he was Ramsay, so I stabbed him—but he wasn’t Ramsay. It was Sandor—”

 

“Shhh, Arya, calm down,” Sansa told her, and before Arya knew it, her sister’s arms pulled her into a warm embrace. She felt Sansa’s hand patting against her back, and it took her a few moments before she realized she was crying. There were no loud, wracking sobs. Her tears were silent tears, stinging her eyes and making everything blurry, and the light fractured in her vision and blinded her. Squeezing her eyes shut, she sucked in a deep breath and hissed it out. She remained in her sister’s arms until everything calmed down and became still, and then Arya slowly opened her eyes again to the world.

 

“Mum, Dad,” Arya whispered, “where are they?”

 

“They went to get something to eat,” Sansa told her softly. “They’ve been in your room non-stop, so I told them to take a break and get something to eat and that I’d stay here with you in case you woke up.”

 

“Where was I shot?”

 

“What?” Sansa asked suddenly, pulling away from Arya to look her in the face. She narrowed her eyes, and her forehead wrinkled with confusion.

 

“I was shot,” Arya repeated dumbly. “Where was I shot?”

 

Sansa looked even more confused, and she shook her head. “You weren’t . . . shot, Arya,” she admitted with hesitation. “What . . . why do you think that?”

 

Arya stared at Sansa in dumbfounded shock, but then she turned her head and glanced down at her stomach. Using her free hand, she checked her body, feeling for any spots that might have been sore to the touch or patched with bandages, but she found nothing. Arya started to shake her head, too.

 

“I . . . I don’t understand,” Arya began to say, getting flustered. “I passed out. Everything went numb—”

 

“You passed out from exhaustion,” Sansa told her. “That’s what the doctors said. They also said you were dehydrated—”

 

“I was _shot_ ,” Arya insisted fervently, beginning to feel angry for no reason she could explain or understand at all.

 

“Maybe it was just the shock,” Sansa suggested, but Arya pulled away from her sister and pushed herself up from the bed. “Arya, what are you—”

 

She was wearing nothing but a hospital gown with underwear on underneath it. Her arm was connected to the IV, but Arya felt fine, and if she wasn’t shot, then she didn’t need it. Arya tore the thing out of her hand as Sansa gasped at her, and then she threw it aside. She turned around to look at Sansa, who had gotten up from the bed as well. There were a million questions on Arya’s mind now that she was awake, but she doubted Sansa would be able to answer any of them.

 

“Where’s Renly?” Arya asked, and Sansa’s confusion came back to replace the look of shock on her face.

 

“Renly?” Sansa returned, lowering her voice. “Why would Renly be here?”

 

“Renly _saved_ me,” Arya insisted, feeling herself getting angry again. “Where is he?”

 

“Renly wasn’t there,” Sansa said. “Arya, I think you’re—”

 

“Where’s Sandor?”

 

Sansa blinked. “He’s on the third floor,” she answered, “but, Arya, you need to—”

 

“I have to speak with him,” Arya said below her breath, her voice catching in her throat. “About something very important. Alone. No one else.”

 

Sansa stared across the room at Arya, and despite her previous look of confusion, an understanding bloomed behind her eyes. Sansa nodded her head. “Okay,” she whispered. “Just don’t run or exert yourself, and come back before Mum and Dad get back, okay?”

 

Arya returned the nod. “Okay,” she said, and with that, she turned around and left the room and closed the door behind herself. The hallway was fairly empty, though a few people bustled about to and fro. She passed by a help desk, which was right across from a set of elevator doors. Arya walked up to one and pressed the button. It lit up, though it took a while for one of the elevators to open up for her. Arya stepped in, and then she turned on her heels and pressed the button for the third floor.

 

It wasn’t until the elevator was moving up that Arya realized her feet were bare because the floor beneath her was cold. She shifted uncomfortably in place, waiting for the elevator to come to a stop. She heard a little ding as it halted, and the doors opened before her. Arya stepped out onto the floor, glancing around in both directions for another help desk. There was one near the end of the hall on the right side, so she walked to it.

 

Arya had to stand on her tiptoes. The counter was really high, and she was still very short for her age. Placing both of her hands upon it, she used them to help raise her up a little bit. There was a young brunette lady on the other side with her hair pulled up in a messy bun, and she lifted her gaze to Arya while raising her eyebrows as well.

 

“I’m looking for Sandor Clegane,” Arya said. “Which room is he in?”

 

“Three fifty-two,” the lady replied, and she looked down the hall the way Arya had come from, nodding her head in that direction. “Follow the signs that way,” she added.

 

“Thank you,” Arya said quickly, and she pulled away from the counter to hurry off in that direction.

 

Arya followed the various signs, some hanging from the ceiling and others stuck to the walls, and she cut around four corners before she reached the rooms in the three fifties. It was backwards instead of forwards, and the first room she spotted was three fifty-eight. Arya slowed her steps as she drew nearer to three fifty-two. When she reached it, she noticed the door was cracked open, but it was silent within the room.

 

Holding out her hand, Arya gently pushed the door open further. It gave way without a single sound. Inside, the room was dark. Blue on white were the only noticeable colors, and the curtains were pulled shut, though a little bit of light peaked in through the bottom. The air was freezing, and Arya stepped inside. She drew in a sharp breath as her feet touched the cold tiles within his room, and Arya turned around to quietly shut the door behind herself. It cut out the light from the hallway, and a steady beeping filled the room.

 

The door clicked as it shut. Arya glanced down at the handle. There was no lock on it. If it had one, she would have locked it.

 

Behind her, she heard shifting.

 

Arya turned around to look, though a short wall to her left blocked her view of the rest of the room. She carefully took one step forward, and then another, until the bed came into view on the left.

 

Tucked in halfway up to his chest under white blankets, Sandor was reclined in the hospital bed. A machine beeped over to the left, and a set of wires ran from the machine to his body. Arya also spotted an IV tube hooked to his hand. His eyes slowly opened up, blinking over and over, though he seemed to have no reaction to the sight of her. Arya saw the apple in his throat bop up and down as he swallowed before he spoke.

 

“You’re not . . . ” Sandor began, his voice hoarse and scratchy. It reminded Arya of the sound of steel scraping over stone. “ . . . Gonna stab me again, are you?”

 

Arya would have laughed if she had any will in her to do so, but she didn’t. Instead, she crept closer to his bed, a silent figure in a matching but smaller gown as his own, and perched herself near the foot of his bed. It was freezing in here. Already, she had goose bumps on her arms and legs. Arya drew them up onto the bed, tucking them under her thin hospital gown. Sandor didn’t move. She expected him to sit up straighter, and then she remembered the knife that had been in his chest.

 

“I thought I killed you,” Arya whispered to him.

 

Sandor breathed in slowly, and Arya watched the steady rise and fall of his chest.

 

“Almost,” he rasped back, closing his eyes. When he reopened them, he stared at her. “In the lung,” he said, “but I think I’m patched up.”

 

Arya’s hand reached out for the plastic footboard of the bed behind her back. She closed her fingers around it, gripping hard, because she needed something to hold onto before she said anything else.

 

“Renly was there,” Arya said, keeping her voice quiet. It was as if she feared someone might hear them, and a part of her did. Arya had heard many things in that house before Sandor had shown up for her, and she wondered if it was even wise to repeat any of it, but her mind wouldn’t let it rest. There was no way Arya could pretend she didn’t hear any of that. “But Sansa doesn’t know. Why doesn’t she know?”

 

Sandor took another slow breath, his chest rising and falling again. “He doesn’t want people to know,” Sandor told her. “He’ll keep his name out of it.” Sandor was silent for a moment, and Arya wondered if he couldn’t talk so much at once because of his injury. He spoke slower than usual, his voice low and soft. “Don’t say his name again. It’s for the best.”

 

“Why was he there?” Arya asked, feeling her fingers tighten on the footboard.

 

“I stopped . . . by your uncle’s house,” Sandor revealed slowly. “Sansa asked me. She was worried about you. The place was . . . ransacked. Arrows. Shotgun blasts. I tried your phone. Ramsay, I think, answered me. It wasn’t you, so I . . . I tracked the GPS on your phone. Renly lived nearby. I asked for his help. I didn’t know . . . what I might be getting into . . . ”

 

“You’re lying,” Arya said with a sharp tone.

 

Sandor lifted his eyes to her, narrowing them. “What?” he asked. “Why would I lie?”

 

“Because you don’t want me to know the truth,” Arya began, swallowing past a lump in her throat, “but I already heard enough.”

 

Sandor was silent again. “What did you hear?”

 

“You and Renly aren’t friends,” Arya said. “Renly’s your boss.” Arya paused, glancing down at blankets. She could see the outline of Sandor’s feet beneath them. “Was . . . your boss. Might still be.”

 

“Arya—”

 

“No, I need answers,” Arya told him, lifting her gaze to his again. “I need to know—”

 

“Stop,” Sandor said, his voice weak. “Stop right there. I can’t tell you. It’s too dangerous. Do not repeat anything you’ve heard—”

 

“I just faced a serial killer who could’ve done _anything_ to me,” Arya shot back, and tears welled up in her eyes at the memory as it all came flooding back to her. “I know danger, and I’m not stupid enough to repeat anything you tell me, but I have to _know_. Does Sansa know, or are you lying to her, too?”

 

Sandor lowered his eyes without lowering his head with it. His silence was all the answer she needed, though, and it answered her question.

 

“It’s complicated,” he rasped.

 

“You’ve been lying to her,” Arya said, a note of accusation in her tone. “What have you and Renly been doing?”

 

“I just woke up,” Sandor said softly, lifting his eyes to hers. “Can you give me a moment?”

 

Arya glanced down at the bed again. It was silent between them. In the darkness the machine beside the bed continued to steadily beep, and Arya reached out for the blanket with her hand, clutching tightly at the thick and heavy fabric. It felt better to hold onto something because her heart rate was pounding again like it had pounded back in the house in the woods. The blanket was cool to the touch, and her fingers gripped it like it was her only lifeline in the entire room.

 

“Have you ever killed someone?” Arya whispered to the darkness, but it wasn’t meant for the darkness. The question was meant for Sandor. She wasn’t sure how long she sat in silence without receiving an answer, and she wasn’t brave enough yet to look up and see his face. Arya had no idea what she would be looking up into if she did that. She thought she had known Sandor, but she was beginning to question everything about him. Did she really know him? Did she really know anything about him at all?

 

“Yes,” he answered her, and finally, Arya looked up.

 

There was no pride in Sandor’s face. There was no look of glory. If anything, his eyes looked hollower, and they reminded her of empty pools as they stared back at her. His expression looked sad, too, like a cat Arya had once when she had refused to give the damn thing its cat treats because it had scratched her on accident.

 

Arya knew Ramsay was a serial killer. She knew he was sick monster, a twisted freak, and probably much worse than any label she could apply to him, but that didn’t stop the feeling of turmoil inside of her. Arya had lost control in a moment of utter rage and survival instinct, and she had stabbed him so many times more than normal in order to kill him. At some point, she had just been stabbing to feel the way it sunk down into his flesh as some sort of act of vengeance upon him. Amidst all of her thoughts, Arya realized her hands were trembling. Her vision was blurry, and her chest was shaking.

 

“How do you live with it?” Arya asked him softly, blinking and feeling a hot tear trickle down her cheek. She raised her free hand to her face, the one not clutching the blanket, and wiped the tear away. “How do you live with yourself after you’ve done that?”

 

Sandor’s silence was profound. More so than it should have been, Arya thought. She sniffled and wiped at her other eye to prevent a second tear from falling. She knew that Ramsay had probably by all sensibilities deserved it, but her hands were stained with blood now. Blood that wasn’t her own. Someone else’s blood. Someone else’s life, and it was all over her. Arya wondered if any amount of scrubbing would ever rid her of it. As she looked down at her hands, she could still see it there.

 

“You don’t,” Sandor said, and Arya glanced up at him. “You just get used to it.”

 

Arya let go of the blanket, holding her hands in front of her.

 

“I still see it,” she said, speaking quickly. “I still see the blood—all over—”

 

She only just woke up herself. This was too much for her. Arya couldn’t handle the reminder, and her lips began to tremble along with her hands. Tears pouted down her cheeks, hot and burning against her skin. Arya wanted to sink into her own bed back in her hospital room, but she didn’t want to walk all the way there for it. It was so far away now, and all she had here was Sandor’s bed.

 

“Can I lie down beside you, or would that freak you out?” Arya asked bluntly, sniffing hard to try and subdue the tears for a moment.

 

Sandor didn’t even try to hide his discomfort at her suggestion, but Arya didn’t see anything wrong with it. He was tied up in tubes and wires, severely injured, and she was, too—though her injuries were beneath the skin and deep in her mind. Still, there was nowhere else to go right now, and Arya didn’t want to walk back to her room, crying. Too many people would ask questions, and they wouldn’t let her sleep.

 

He glanced over to his left, and then slowly to his right. There wasn’t much room on the bed. It wasn’t made for two people, only one, but there was still extra room to his right. Sandor was closer to the machine, leaving a slightly open space over to the right where a plastic hospital bed railing was raised up. When he didn’t answer her, Arya got up from the left side of the bed where she was sitting and walked around the foot of the bed to the other side.

 

She grabbed and pulled up the blanket, but not the sheet, and crawled onto the bed in the small space between Sandor and bed railing. He didn’t say anything, but he also couldn’t physically move himself from what Arya had seen so far, so she kept a few inches between them as she settled as comfortably as possible into the bed. Arya was lying on top of the sheet while he was lying under it, creating a boundary between them. She pulled the blanket up to her shoulder to try and get warm, and despite the little distance between their bodies, Arya nestled her forehead against his shoulder and closed her eyes.

 

She had thought she was angry with Sandor, but she realized in that moment she wasn’t or she wouldn’t have stayed there in his room with him. He had come for her when no one else did, and not because they didn’t want to since Arya knew no one had known about her abduction thanks to Ramsay, but still, Sandor had come for her. He had shown up with the intention to save her, and so she didn’t hate him. She could ask him more about his situation with Renly later. In the hospital she was safe, and in here she was safe. Right now, all Arya wanted to do was sleep some more.

 

“Thank you,” she murmured into the blanket, “for coming for me.”

 

Sandor didn’t say anything, but his silence was okay.

 

Arya was too tired and too upset over the memory of killing Ramsay to think of anything else but that, so it didn’t cross her mind as she laid there that the man in the house with Ramsay had said something offhandedly about another person taking care of the job properly. When she woke up again, she might remember it, but right now, Arya’s mental state was beaten down and bruised to a pulp. Arya was safe in the hospital room right here, and Sansa was safe back in the other room. Briefly, before she fell asleep again, she thought of Gendry.

 

Balling up the blanket in her hand, Arya brought her face down against it as she drifted off beside Sandor.

 

 


	79. All Your Bullets Ricochet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Book references. Book references, everywhere.

_* * *_

 

The door to the room burst open, causing Sansa to gasp and jump all at once. She quickly lifted up her head as well, her hand flying to her heart. The loud and abrupt noise had shocked her after being alone for so long in the dead silence of Arya’s hospital room.

 

“Where is she?” Gendry demanded at once, panting and looking a little worse for wear. He must have run all the way here from his car in the parking lot and the hospital entrance on the ground floor.

 

Sansa lowered her hand from her heart, knowing immediately that he meant her sister. Gendry had been visiting some of his family members on his mother’s side for the holidays, and they lived outside of Kingsland. The moment he had heard the news from Sansa over the phone, Gendry took the first flight back in that was available. He was disheveled mess from his uncombed hair to his improperly buttoned shirt that wasn’t tucked in at the waist, hanging partly off one of his shoulders. His frantic eyes darted around the room, but nobody else was there with Sansa. Arya had left to go see Sandor to talk to him, but Sansa was sure she wouldn’t mind the interruption if it was Gendry.

 

“I’ll take you to her,” Sansa said, thinking enough time had passed for Arya to talk alone with Sandor. Rising from the chair in the corner, Sansa walked over to the door and stepped out of the room. Gendry immediately followed her without asking any questions.

 

Sandor and Arya had both been admitted to the hospital yesterday evening after sunset. Sansa had been visiting both her sister and Sandor since their arrival, not knowing what had happened to either one of them. Arya’s situation was soon explained to her and her family, though. They were told she had been kidnapped by Ramsay Bolton, but that Arya had gotten out of it with little more than some bruises, cuts, a badly wounded wrist with an infection, exhaustion, and a case of dehydration. Ramsay was found dead at the scene with multiple stab wounds by a kitchen knife, and another man was found dead out in the forest not far from the premises with a gunshot wound to the chest.

 

Catelyn cried upon hearing the news, and Jon couldn’t look anyone in the eyes. Ned’s guilt was easily read upon his face, but Sansa knew despite everything that Arya had been lucky. No one had ever escaped from Ramsay Bolton before, except for Officer Brienne Tarth. Not only that, but Arya had escaped without any flay marks or any other wounds to her body. Everyone had been visiting Arya earlier, even though she was asleep. Robb and Theon had finally made it out a few days ago, and they came up to see her with the rest of the family. Sansa had mostly stayed with Arya because they wouldn’t always let her in to see Sandor. She overheard the nurses talking about him being rushed into some type of surgery upon arrival, but beyond that, neither the doctors nor the nurses would tell her anything about Sandor’s condition or what they had done to him. They would only tell her what room he was moved to for recovery. Since last night, Sansa had only managed to get into his room twice.

 

Sandor hadn’t woken up from the anesthesia the first time she went to visit him, and the second time he must have still been out due to all the painkillers they were giving him through his IV fluids. Sansa read the information on his chart. She wasn’t family by marriage or blood, so they told her they couldn’t release information to her, which left Sansa with no idea of what they had done to him or what had happened. His charts on revealed what they were giving to him, and half of the words Sansa couldn’t understand, anyway. She didn’t know if he went in for surgery or they had done some other minor procedure. She didn’t know the depth of the wound in his chest or how serious it was, only that he had one due to the large bandage in place.

 

Sansa was only allowed to occasionally visit, and that was it.

 

It wasn’t long before the two of them made it to the third floor, and Sansa knew the way without having to ask for directions. She wondered if Sandor had even been awake when Arya came to stop by, and then she wondered if Arya was even still in Sandor’s room. If she hadn’t returned to her own room, though, Sansa had no idea where else her sister could be. Once she reached the door to room three fifty-two, she turned the handle slowly and pushed it open.

 

The lights were off, so the room was almost in near darkness. It was also freezing cold, and Sansa immediately wrapped her arms around her chest. She took a few steps into the room, and Gendry pushed past her, bumping into her shoulder. Sansa cut a dark look at the back of his head that he couldn’t see because he wasn’t bothering to look at her, and then she reached out and flicked on the light switch beside the door.

 

The room flooded with light, and the first thing Sansa heard was Gendry’s angry voice.

 

“What the _hell_ is this?” Gendry demanded.

 

Sansa narrowed her eyes in confusion and stepped around the wall to look into the room, her mouth dropping open at what he saw on the hospital bed. Sandor was lying on his back, his left hand connected to an IV pack hanging beside his bed. There were various wires still running from the machine to multiple points on his body, monitoring his condition. The light must have awoken him from a nap because he squeezed his eyes shut against it, raising his free hand to shield his face from it.

 

On his right side, Arya was lying beside him on the bed underneath the blanket. Unlike Gendry, Sansa wasn’t mad. She knew her sister, and she knew Sandor, and she knew the situation was anything but something inappropriate. She had asked Sandor to go check on Arya for her, and by some miracle Sansa had yet to figure out, Sandor had found Arya and had a hand in saving her life.

 

Arya had gone through something traumatic, and Sandor had saved her life, so Sansa wasn’t about to jump to jealous conclusions about why Arya was huddled against him and fast asleep. Clearly, Arya felt safe here.

 

Gendry, however, thought otherwise.

 

Arya lifted her head from the pillow, her eyes squinting in the bright light. She sat upright on the bed, though Sandor remained lying down. At the sight of Gendry in the room, Arya’s eyes brightened up for one moment in a look of actual happiness.

 

Then, Gendry spoke again, and he ruined it.

 

“What the _fuck_ are you doing in bed with him?” Gendry shot at Arya, and Arya’s happiness faded into hurt, and then it molded into a look of resentment.

 

“What is your _problem_?” Arya threw back at him.

 

“You’re in bed with Sansa’s boyfriend!”

 

Arya quickly hopped out of the bed, charging right up to Gendry. “Yeah?” she said loudly. “Well, at least he was _there_ for me!”

 

Gendry leaned back in shock as if Arya had just slapped him across the face, and he took a step back. In his eyes he looked utterly devastated by her accusation. Slowly, Gendry shook his head. “That’s not fair,” he whispered.

 

“Yeah, well, next time _think_ about that before you act like a complete _asshole_ ,” Arya snapped at him, trying to sound strong, but Sansa saw the tears welling up in her sister’s eyes. Before Gendry could respond to her, Arya took off running down the hall through the open door. Gendry whirled around, watching her hurry off.

 

“You better go after her,” Sansa told him, and Gendry turned his shocked stare onto Sansa before he closed his mouth and nodded his head. Without a word, Gendry hurried off after Arya.

 

“Well,” Sandor said, “that was awkward.”

 

Sansa turned to look at him, offering a small smile. She made her way over to a small lamp, clicking it on, and went back to turn off the overhead light. It was dimmer now, and it looked more comfortable for Sandor. Sansa approached his bed, sitting down on the edge of it.

 

“How are you feeling?” she asked him, reaching out for his hand and enclosing her fingers around it.

 

“Like someone who has been stabbed,” Sandor told her, and he closed his eyes, laying his head back on the pillow again. Sansa ran her thumb over his knuckles.

 

“What happened, Sandor?” Sansa inquired softly. “I don’t understand half of what I’ve heard so far.”

 

“A lot,” he said. He was quiet for a moment, taking the time to breathe. Sandor’s eyes remained closed as he told his story. “I went to your uncle’s house,” he began. “There were signs of an invasion. I had Arya’s number . . . in my call log. From camp. She called once. I dialed it. No answer, so I texted. Something was wrong. She said she was there . . . but no one was there. I tracked her GPS out to a cabin, but people with guns were there. I waited, watched, until most of them drove off. I went inside to look for her. She stabbed me. Thought I was Ramsay, I guess. He came into the room. She killed him. I told her to get help, and then I passed out.”

 

Sansa frowned deeply. She believed Sandor’s story, but her family had been told something different. So far, Sansa had kept her mouth shut. She didn’t know what was going on, and she didn’t know if she should challenge it. According to the hospital, Sandor and Arya were admitted at different times and their injuries were of unrelated incidents. Not that Sansa knew much about anything when it came to Sandor because nobody would tell her anything, but the story about Arya was she had escaped on her own and a stranger found her passed out on the side of the road and brought her to the hospital immediately. The person had also called the police to the location because he heard a gunshot as well, which brought the police out to the cabin.

 

Sandor was unconscious the whole time, though, so there was no way to know exactly what had happened out there. Arya had passed out, too, but she seemed to think Renly had rescued her from the roadside. Moreover, Arya remembered the gunshot from the hospital’s story, so that part was true. Sansa had so many questions about everything else, but she hadn’t wanted to overwhelm her sister upon her first time of waking up from her ordeal with Ramsay. Arya was still in a state of shock, and Sansa thought the questions could wait for now.

 

“The hospital says Arya came in separately from you,” Sansa said in a quiet voice, “and unrelated.”

 

Sandor opened his eyes at that, narrowing them slightly. “Did they?” he asked.

 

Sansa nodded her head.

 

“What did Arya say so far?”

 

Sansa exhaled a slow breath. “She just woke up before she came to visit you,” Sansa revealed. “I barely had a chance to speak to her, but she said Renly rescued her, and she said she stabbed you because she thought you were Ramsay.”

 

“Both true,” Sandor responded, the apple in his throat moving up and down as he swallowed. “But don’t repeat Renly’s name. He must have took it out. He doesn’t want it in there.”

 

“Why not?” Sansa asked, confused by this.

 

“Complications,” Sandor said, looking her in the eyes, “for him. Just promise me you won’t repeat it.”

 

“Okay,” Sansa whispered, and her thumb ran over his knuckles again. She didn’t know the why of it, but she trusted Sandor’s judgment. “Does Arya know not to repeat it?”

 

Sandor nodded his head. “She does,” he answered. “I told her when she came to see me.”

 

“Why all the secrecy?”

 

Sandor’s fingers gripped hers back, though the strength felt gone from them. Sansa had to remind herself he was on a lot of painkillers. “I’ll explain it to you later,” he told her. “Okay?”

 

“Okay,” Sansa said softly, but then she had another question on the tip of her tongue as well. “How bad is the stab wound in your chest?”

 

“Not that bad,” Sandor admitted. “It’s not that deep, but it punctured a lung. I’ve never been stabbed in the lung before.” Sandor closed his eyes again, and he made a small huff before drawing in another slow breath. “I’ll be on my feet in four to five days, they said. Out of the hospital by the end of the week.”

 

Sansa felt herself smiling at that news. “Good,” she said, “because I think we ought to tell Mum and Dad the true story. At least of how you were involved. I think they would love to have you over for the holidays with us, especially after everything . . . ”

 

“Are you sure they would believe it?” he asked, raising his eyebrows with his eyes still shut.

 

“Yes,” Sansa told him, still smiling. “They would if Arya backed you up.”

 

Sandor took another slow breath, exhaling it. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

 

Sansa grinned at that, finding it a good enough answer for now. Christmas was just around the corner, and Sansa wanted to spend it with her family, but she also wanted to spend it with Sandor. The only way she could think to reconcile the two wishes was to have Sandor over for her family’s Christmas gathering. Of course, when she thought about it, it might be strange for Robb and Theon. They had heard of Sansa’s new boyfriend. Sansa was in the room when Catelyn and Ned mentioned his name, and Robb and Theon did a double-take at each other before looking over in Sansa’s direction with wide eyes and gaping expressions. They had feigned ignorance about knowing Sandor, and luckily, Sansa hadn’t been alone with either one of her brothers yet to undergo a lengthy questionnaire on how _that_ relationship came to be.

 

She imagined Theon and Robb had their suspicions, though. After all, Sandor did punch Theon in the face over Sansa.

 

The two of them had fallen into silence. Sansa didn’t want to wear Sandor out by making him talk too much, and she was just sitting beside him on the bed, rubbing her thumb over his knuckles soothingly, when a knock came at the door. Sansa turned her head to look, and Officer Loras stepped into the room. He tilted his head at Sansa, offering her a small smile. Sansa smiled back at him. He was in full police uniform, so Sansa could only guess he was here on business and not pleasure.

 

“Hey,” Loras said to both of them, his crooked smile lighting up the lower half of his face, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “May I have a word with Sandor alone, Sansa?”

 

Sansa glanced over at Sandor, who nodded his head for her. Sansa took a deep breath and let it go before she got up from the bed, but she leaned over Sandor and kissed his forehead tenderly. When she pulled back, she ran her thumb over his temple and gave him a small smile. He didn’t smile back, but his eyes looked happy, and that was enough.

 

Sansa smiled at Officer Loras as she walked past him to the door. When she stepped out of the room, she slowly pulled the door to a close. Sansa didn’t walk away from it, though. Instead, she leaned up against the door, pressed her ear to it, and listened to their conversation.

 

“ . . . The official story doesn’t involve your name or Renly’s,” Loras said, his voice sounding distant and muffled through the thick door. “Arya escaped on her own. That’s what the papers will say.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because it’s too hard trying to explain why you were there, too,” Loras said. “It’s better this way.”

 

“Cleaning up my messes again, are you?”

 

“Cleaning up what we have to,” Loras said. “Too much information out there is bad publicity. You and Renly weren’t the only ones there. Arya and Ramsay weren’t the only ones there. There is no telling who those other people were, who they work for, or what is going on.”

 

“More conspiracies . . . ”

 

“Better safe than sorry,” Loras told him. “Too many people in the game know who you used to work for, and even though Renly stayed away from the cabin, he still shot and killed a man chasing after Arya.”

 

“Who did he kill?”

 

“Who knows,” Loras said flippantly. Sansa frowned to herself, thinking that was out of character for Loras. Loras, who was always so bubbly, who cared about everyone and everything—at least as far as she knew of him. Did she know him so little? “We’ve yet to identify him,” Loras continued. “A foreigner, most likely. He isn’t in the system.”

 

There was a moment of silence.

 

“Why were they there?” Sandor finally asked Loras, though he was so quiet that Sansa had to strain to hear him. “Why were people visiting Ramsay while he had Arya locked in his cabin?”

 

“We don’t know that yet either,” Loras answered, his voice lower and harder to hear as well.

 

“Don’t you think you ought to find out?” Sandor asked, though his tone took on a change like he was mocking Loras.

 

“We’re working on it.”

 

“Work on it _faster_.”

 

“What about Arya?” Loras cut in, sounding impatient.

 

“What about her?”

 

“Are you going to take care of her?”

 

There was a second stretch of silence, and it brought a spike of fear suddenly into Sansa’s heart. What did Loras mean by that? What did he mean by ‘take care’ of her sister? The way he said it, it sounded like . . .

 

“I’ll take care of her,” Sandor answered so quietly that Sansa barely heard it.

 

Her ears were ringing, drowning out all other sound.

 

“Well, I’ve got to be going,” Loras said loud enough to break her form her spell, and Sansa quickly pulled away from the door as she heard his footsteps coming towards it. Sansa rushed over to the nearest bench to sit down, folding her hands in her lap and pretending like she was waiting patiently for them to finish. When Loras exited the room, he grinned brightly at Sansa this time and tipped his hat at her again.

 

“Take care, Sansa,” Loras told her, and Sansa tried to smile back at him, though it wasn’t much by comparison. Loras didn’t seem to notice the difference. Her gaze followed him as he walked away, taking one of the elevators probably back down to the ground floor. Sansa glanced back at Sandor’s hospital room door. She felt both anger and fear welling up inside of her, but she didn’t know what they meant by what they said. There was only one way to find out.

 

Sansa stood up from the bench, taking slow steps back into Sandor’s room.

 

He was still reclined on the bed, his eyes closed once more. His chest moved up and down steadily as his lungs breathed in and out. At the sight of him, though, all of Sansa’s fears faded away. This is Sandor, she reminded herself. Sandor wouldn’t hurt her sister. Why would he rescue Arya only to hurt her afterwards? It didn’t make any sense at all, and Sansa knew in her heart that Sandor would never do that to her. She knew it, and if she knew it, then why did their exchange scare her so much?

 

“What did you mean by that?” Sansa asked him from across the room, finding her voice barely a whisper.

 

Sandor opened his eyes. He blinked them once, looking confused. “What?”

 

“‘I’ll take care of her,’” Sansa repeated quietly. “What does that mean?”

 

As he exhaled a slow breath, Sandor shut his eyes again. He bit down on his lip for a moment, but as he let it go, his eyelids lifted and his gaze settled on her. “I need to talk to her,” Sandor explained carefully, “to make sure she knows what story to tell others.”

 

The clutching grip on Sansa’s heart alleviated some, but not enough.

 

“I don’t understand—” Sansa said, shaking her head in bewilderment, but he cut her off before she could say more.

 

“Sansa, there’s something I have to tell you—”

 

The door shut all of a sudden behind her, drawing Sansa’s attention towards it. Arya stepped into the room with a careful precision in each step and a curious look upon her face, and that was when Sansa realized that Arya must have heard the last half of their conversation.

 

“I’ll tell her,” Arya offered calmly, confusing Sansa even more.

 

Sansa glanced between the two of them. “Will somebody please tell me what is going _on_?” she demanded, though her voice shook with each word from her lips.

 

Arya wasn’t looking at Sansa, though. She was looking straight at Sandor.

 

“They didn’t want me,” Arya said, staring at Sandor. “They wanted you, Sansa. They caught me on accident because they thought I was you.”

 

“What?” Sansa breathed out, barely able to believe the words that came out of Arya’s mouth. Her chest shook with each breath, and her hands trembled at her sides. Ramsay had kidnapped Arya on accident, intending to capture her? Was all of this _her_ fault, then? Was everything her sister had been through _her_ fault?

 

“Sandor and me are going to watch over you,” Arya said, still sounding calm. “I asked Mum and Dad to talk to the nurses about moving me into Sandor’s room. There’s an empty bed right there on the other side of the curtain.” Arya gestured at the curtain that hung from the ceiling as a room divider, pulled only halfway since the other bed was not currently occupied. “They said it was okay. I told them how Sandor saved me, but I said because of the legal kerfuffle, Sandor wants to leave his name out of it. I could get into trouble for stabbing him, and he didn’t want that. Mum and Dad understood.”

 

Sansa was so shell-shocked that she didn’t understand a single word Arya had just said, and when she glanced over at Sandor, his face was overwhelmed and tight at the same time. Sansa didn’t know if it was because of Arya or something else. She had no idea what was going on, but Arya’s words stuck with her. _They didn’t want me_. _They wanted you, Sansa_.

 

She was shaking. She was shaking all over.

 

A pair of hands gently took her by the arms, and Sansa felt herself being turned around to face somebody. Arya’s face came into view, oddly calm despite her own near breakdown earlier, and Arya said directly to Sansa, “It’s not _your_ fault. Don’t think that, Sansa. Don’t you _ever_ think that. You’re my sister, and it’s not your fault. I’ve got to protect you, though.”

 

“I couldn’t . . . ” Sansa tried to speak, but she choked on the words. Her vision became blurry with tears, which spilled in hot tracks down her cheeks. “I couldn’t—I couldn’t protect _you_ —”

 

Arya shook her head. “That’s not your fault,” she said quietly. “We can protect each other now, okay? I’ve got a needle in my pocket. I nicked it off one of the nurses. It’s got a powerful sedative in it—”

 

“That’s stealing,” Sandor accused from across the room, sounding angry. “You do know stealing is illegal, don’t you?”

 

Arya looked over at him, calmer than Sansa had ever seen her. “It’s hard to feel bad about stealing after what I’ve done,” she said to him, and Sansa didn’t hear another word out of Sandor. She didn’t turn her head to look at him either. She blinked, which caused more hot tears to fall down her cheeks. “We can use it,” Arya said, talking to Sansa again, “if anybody tries to come and mess with you. I’ll stab them in the neck with it and knock them out.”

 

“I should go home,” Sansa said weakly. “I’ll be safer at home—”

 

“No,” Arya said, shaking her head. Sansa could only barely make it out through the blur. “We can’t tell Mum and Dad. It’s too complicated. You have to trust me. You have to trust Sandor. We can do this. We stick together. We can do this.”

 

Sansa started to shake her head. “You’re only _sixteen_ , Arya—” she protested.

 

“And I killed Ramsay Bolton,” Arya countered back in a low voice. “I think I can handle using a sedative.”

 

“You’re not in your right state of mind,” Sansa told her sister, calming herself down with a deep breath. “You need rest. You need a—a _counselor_ to talk to—”

 

“I need to not think about it,” Arya rebutted, “and I need to look out for you.” Arya was silent for a moment, staring back at Sansa. Their eyes locked together, and everything became clear. Sansa saw the turmoil still under the surface of Arya’s faked calm exterior—the worry, the fear, and the frightened little girl. “Looking out for you helps me to not think about it,” Arya whispered, and her eyes glistened under the dim light.

 

“She’s right,” Sandor said from the bed again, and this time Sansa looked over at him. His head was tilted slightly to the right, though he was looking at Sansa. “Your parents won’t believe it, or they’ll drag the entire force into it. Too many people causes too much of a commotion. Makes you easy to find.”

 

“Why is someone after me?” Sansa asked, and she turned back to Arya. “And if Ramsay kidnapped you and he’s dead now, then doesn’t that make me safe?”

 

“Someone sent Ramsay,” Sandor slowly explained to her. “They’ll send someone else now that he’s dead.”

 

“But _why_?” Sansa demanded all of a sudden, looking between the both of them. “There is _nothing_ special about me! I’m just . . . I’m just Sansa . . . ”

 

“I don’t know that,” Arya said. “All I know is what I heard, and the man who came to visit told Ramsay that I wasn’t the right girl. He wanted Sansa Stark, not me, and I wasn’t you.”

 

Sansa looked down at the floor, taking a deep breath. “Then, what do I do? Do I just sit around all day, locked up wherever I am, doing nothing?”

 

“No,” Arya said, and she took Sansa by the hand and led her over to the empty bed on the other side of the room, which was closer to the windows. Arya plopped down on the bed, and Sansa carefully sat down beside her. “You spend it with your boyfriend,” Arya added, “and your best friend in the whole wide world, who also happens to be your sister.”

 

Sansa wanted to laugh at that, but she didn’t have the humor in her to do it. She wiped the tear streaks from her face with her sleeve. “Doing what?” she asked miserably.

 

Arya shrugged her shoulders. “Play board games until Sandor gets out of here, I guess,” she suggested. “Got any good ones in mind?”

 

“No,” Sansa said shakily, but when she took another deep breath, ever so slowly, she began to calm down again. “But maybe I can think of one.”

 

 


	80. Warm Like Snow

_* * *_

 

The suitcase fit neatly into the trunk, and Sandor waited for Arya to toss her bag in beside it before he closed it. Loras was kind enough to bring his vehicle to him from Renly’s woodland manse, so it was parked and waiting for him out in the parking lot today when he was ready to leave the hospital. The doctor had finally given his consent for Sandor’s departure for today, handing him a whole list of instructions on what not to do for the next four to six weeks while his lung and chest were healing from the injury he had sustained at Ramsay’s cabin. The list itself was a pain in the ass to read, telling Sandor he could do no heavy lifting, running, or any type of physical straining. It included every activity that might make him short of breath.

 

Sandor turned around and leaned against the trunk of his car, crossing his arms low over his chest. Arya mimicked his actions beside him, leaning against the car and crossing her arms, too. When Sandor glanced down at her, Arya pretended not to notice.

 

“Why didn’t you tell Sansa everything?” Sandor asked her. He had been wanting to ask that question ever since Arya came into the hospital room and told both of them what she had overhead in the cabin with Ramsay. It had only been four days ago, but four days was a long time to wait with such a burden hanging over their heads. Arya had played a purposeful game of picking and choosing which pieces of information she revealed to them, but Sandor knew all of what lingered under the surface, even if Sansa didn’t know the whole story yet.

 

His question drew Arya’s gaze up to meet his own, and she looked thoughtful as she considered her response.

 

“About them wanting her to get to you?” Arya inquired with a perfect calmness. When he said nothing and looked away, she must have taken his reaction as a yes. “I didn’t know how Sansa would take it,” Arya admitted quietly. She was silent for a moment. “You care about my sister. You care about her a lot, or you wouldn’t have done half the things you’ve done for her. As much as I know my sister, though, I don’t know how she would react to that.”

 

Sandor felt a dryness in his throat, and he swallowed despite it. “You think she would leave?” he asked. He didn’t say the last part. _Me_ , but the implication was there.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, Sandor saw Arya shrug her shoulders in response. “I don’t know,” she simply said. “Why are they after you, anyway? I heard they wanted Renly. It explains why he tucked his tail between his legs and ran.”

 

“He didn’t run,” Sandor said, finding it odd to be defending Renly in a moment like this. “He just took his name out of it. If it weren’t for him, we’d both be dead. He called the paramedics for me, and he shot and killed the man who would have killed you.”

 

“That’s one way to look at it,” Arya said in a nonchalant voice.

 

“It’s the only way to look at it,” Sandor replied firmly. “He could’ve left me for dead, and he wouldn’t have anything left to worry about, would he? Can’t get to him if I’m dead.”

 

“They wouldn’t be after Sansa if they didn’t think you would do anything for her. You know, to keep her safe,” Arya said below her breath. There was a pause after the statement was made, and Sandor was afraid of what might come next. “Would you do anything for her?” Arya asked, turning her head to look up at him again.

 

Sandor didn’t meet her gaze. He saw it out of the corner of his vision, but he didn’t look at her. “I would,” he said, “if it would keep her safe.”

 

He saw Arya look away, staring out into the parking lot with him. “That’s why I didn’t tell her everything,” Arya said softly.

 

Sandor fell quiet as he saw Gendry approaching, the younger man weaving his way through a row of cars to get to them. Arya and Gendry had sorted out their issues that same day they had their fight because Gendry had been staying in the room with them every day since then, spending as much time as possible around Arya while she waited in the hospital with Sandor. Arya didn’t tell Gendry about what was going on, but she made an offhand comment to Sandor one day how it was better to have a strong person with them as long as Sandor was bedridden. Gendry wasn’t very tall, but he was built. Nothing strange ever happened at the hospital, though, and no odd people ever showed up to give cause for alarm.

 

Gendry managed a weak smile at Sandor, tilting his head in greeting once he reached them. Sandor returned the nod.

 

Gendry looked at Arya. “Ready to go home?” he asked.

 

“I guess so,” Arya answered, and she pushed herself off of the car. “I put my bag in Sandor’s trunk already.”

 

“Are you riding with him?” Gendry inquired softly.

 

Arya shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t have to,” she said. “I can ride with you.”

 

Gendry slowly nodded his head at her answer, looking relieved to hear it. “Well, they’re heading off. Sansa should be here any second if she’s riding with you,” Gendry said, looking at Sandor.

 

“I’ll see you at the house,” Arya told Sandor.

 

“Okay,” Sandor agreed, his arms still crossed, and he watched as Gendry and Arya grasped hands and walked off together. They disappeared between the cars, and a voice from Sandor’s left broke him from his reverie.

 

“Hey,” Sansa said beside him, and Sandor looked over immediately. He frowned when he saw no one else by her side.

 

“Did you walk over here alone?” Sandor asked, and he couldn’t keep away the tone of worry or irritation. They had agreed before they left the hospital that she wouldn’t walk anywhere without someone by her side.

 

Sansa rolled her eyes. “I’ll be fine,” she told him.

 

Sandor took her gently by the arm, and he escorted her into the passenger side of his car. He walked around to the driver’s side, getting in and closing the door behind himself. “Don’t walk around alone,” Sandor reminded her firmly in the silence of the car. “We talked about this.”

 

“You know,” Sansa began, while he cranked the car, “I don’t believe what Arya said that day about people coming after me.”

 

Sandor paused with his hand on the keys. The engine purred to life, and cool air poured from the vents. He had the heat on, but it would take a few minutes at the least to get warm inside of the car. “Why not?”

 

She sighed from the seat beside him. “She needs a counselor,” Sansa continued, her voice unsteady. “It’s as plain as day, Sandor. Arya doesn’t know how to deal with what’s happened to her, so she’s creating this elaborate fantasy to deal with it. She’s imagining that they were after me, so it gives her a purpose now that it’s over. She has to protect me now, in her head, and that’s her way of coping with it. It’s typical Arya. She has to be proactive. She has to _do_ something. Arya can’t sit on the sidelines and talk about her feelings. She needs something to keep her busy, and this keeps her busy.”

 

It was a good explanation, but it wasn’t the truth. Sandor turned his head to look at Sansa. “How do you know she’s creating a story?” he asked her. “How do you know it’s not true?”

 

Sansa gave Sandor a look, tilting her head to the side and raising her eyebrows. “Did _you_ hear anything in that house about people coming after me?”

 

Sandor couldn’t look her in the eyes and lie. “No,” he said, though reluctantly.

 

“Well, then,” Sansa said, and she glanced forward through the windshield as she sighed deeply. Her voice fell into a pained whisper. “She faced a serial killer, Sandor. She was trapped in his house for over a week, chained to a bed like she was less than a human. God knows what he said to her, what he threatened to do to her that he never got a chance to do. She’s just my little sister. She’s not some brave warrior, riding off into battle. She’s a scared little girl, and Ramsay . . . he broke her down, and I need to help her get back on her feet.”

 

Sansa wiped the tears from her eyes with her shirt sleeve, and Sandor didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say to that. There was no way he could refute it without looking like an asshole, so he pulled out of the parking space in silence and navigated towards the road. They drove in quiet back to the Stark residence on Winterfell Avenue. Most of the houses were decorated with Christmas lights, and the lampposts on each street had been adorned with large wire ornaments in various shapes, such as snowflakes, snowman, candy canes, and the like, which lit up with various colors at nightfall. The snow was a few inches high, and the roads and driveways were slippery.

 

Sandor parked his car on the side of the road behind Jon’s jeep. The driveway was full, and the options for parking were slim. Sansa hopped out and walked to the house as Sandor popped open the trunk and grabbed Arya’s bag. The small suitcase he had put in there earlier was a gift from Ned with some clothes in it for Sandor once he got out of the hospital. Sandor was never able to go home and pick up any, so Ned had taken the liberties of getting him some. It was the first time Ned had shown anything but a simple respect towards Sandor, and it was more than likely thanks to the story Arya had told him. That was bullshit, too, of course. There was no legal trouble waiting for Arya after stabbing him once in a perceived action of self-defense, but it made for a good cover story on why the hospital told Ned and Cat something different from the truth.

 

As he made his way through the lawn to the front door, Sandor noticed a new vehicle parked in front of the others than he had never seen up here before. The black jeeps belonged to Robb and Jon, the yellow jeep was Theon’s, and the silver car was Ned’s. Gendry’s white car was also here, which was new, but Sandor knew who owned it. The vehicle Sandor had never seen before was a navy blue truck with mud tracks all over it. Sandor stared at it, narrowing his eyes as he wondered who it belonged to. If the person was here now, though, he would soon enough find out.

 

The front door was still open from Sansa’s entry, so Sandor stepped right into the toasty warm air of the Stark household. He shut the door behind himself as a hand grabbed for the bag in his hands, and Sandor looked down to see Arya, who smiled up at him briefly. “Thank you,” she told him quickly, and she ran off for the stairs with her bag in tow.

 

“You must be Sandor,” an older man’s voice called out, a hand clasping itself on his shoulder. Sandor turned in the direction of the voice, following the hand, and found himself looking into the face of a tall man at least in his sixties with long grey curly hair pulled into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. He had a beard and mustache as well, and when he smiled at Sandor, his eyes twinkled, but the lines on his weathered face were hard. “The name’s Brynden,” he said, “and I hear you saved my great niece.”

 

Sandor felt an acute sense of shock for a second or two before he blinked it away. “That’s the story I keep hearing,” he said in response, realizing this was the man who left black arrows stuck in the walls and shotgun blasts blown in the staircase of his woodland cabin. “She saved herself, though. I just got myself stabbed.” Sandor looked Brynden up and down, wondering why the man looked like there was nothing wrong with him. “What happened to you? Your place was a mess. I figured you wounded or dead.”

 

“Can’t say I’m proud of it,” Brynden said, “but the home invasion gave me a war flashback. It’s hard to explain to those who haven’t been through it. I escaped through the balcony on the second story. They chased me for a long while until I lost them. I thought they were after me, not Arya, or I would’ve warned Cat and Ned instead of hiding in the woods for a week. It’s not my proudest moment, knowing I could’ve stopped that if I wasn’t being so self-centered.”

 

“You couldn’t have known,” Sandor assured him, but the assurance didn’t do much for Brynden. The man made a face and shook his head.

 

“But I ought to have,” Brynden replied, and he clapped Sandor on the shoulder. “C’mon, have a drink with me—”

 

“I don’t drink,” Sandor said, cutting him off abruptly. “Recovering alcoholic,” he added as an explanation.

 

Brynden raised his eyebrows at that news. “ _Current_ alcoholic,” he added himself, smiling crookedly. “But I understand the struggle. Apple cider instead?”

 

Sandor followed Brynden into the kitchen and shared a drink with the man, even though his was non-alcoholic apple cider and Brynden’s was hard liquor. There were more people here than just Sansa’s main family, and Sandor didn’t know any of them. He doubted any of them knew him or his story of why he was here, excepting the incident with Arya being kidnapped by Ramsay. After what felt like a long conversation with Brynden about hunting and fishing, two things that Sandor knew next to nothing about, he excused himself and wandered back into the living room. He paused beside the wall separating the dining area from the living room and stared at the crowd of people beyond it.

 

Robb was leaning against the wall to his right, and Sandor caught sight of him out of the corner of his eyes. The young man pushed himself off of the wall, taking slow steps up to Sandor. Robb appraised him with a critical gaze before tilting his head upward.

 

“So,” Robb said, “you’re dating one of my sisters, and you saved the other.”

 

“Seems to be the story,” Sandor agreed.

 

“And you punched my brother in the face,” Robb added with a tone to match the look on his face, narrowing his eyes at Sandor. Sandor glanced around the living room, but he didn’t see Theon anywhere nearby, so he returned his gaze back to Robb.

 

“Not my proudest moment,” Sandor told the boy, echoing the words of Brynden from earlier. He had remembered them just then because of Robb’s statement, and they seemed suitable enough for the situation at hand as well.

 

“Were you dating my sister then?” Robb inquired further, his tone getting a little angry under the surface. “Is that why you punched Theon?”

 

Sandor leaned a little closer to Robb. “No,” he said, “but then, why do you think I punched him?”

 

When Sandor pulled away from him, he gauged Robb’s mixed reaction of shock and bewilderment. Finally, Robb settled on his steely coolness from before and crossed his arms over his chest.

 

“Well,” Robb told him, “the story is you’re not so bad, even if you are too old for her.” Robb leaned in close to Sandor this time. “But I’ve got my eye on you,” he said below his breath, and he pointed at his right eye as he said it. Robb pulled back with a smug look on his face, and then he turned around and walked off, disappearing into the crowd of family in the living room. Sandor watched him go, shaking his head all the while at Robb’s retreating figure with narrowed eyes. Theon was probably around here somewhere as well, so Sandor was going to have to prepare himself for a meeting with him, too.

 

Sandor spotted Arya and Gendry sitting side by side on the staircase with each other, talking in low voices away from the crowd. He wondered at that, guessing that maybe Arya and Gendry’s relationship must have come out into the open during the hospital stay, but Cat and Ned didn’t seem too concerned with it. They must have used up all of their shock over discovering him and Sansa seeing each other.

 

He was beginning to feel awkward and out of place amongst the crowd of Stark and Tully family members all mingling together. Occasionally, someone brought Sandor into a conversation, but for the most part, nobody was very familiar with him and they forgot about him easily. He didn’t mind, though. Sandor slunk off to the kitchen to refill his cup with more apple cider, finding Bran at the dining table as he picked off pieces of a carrot cake. Bran looked up at his arrival, but the boy must have not perceived Sandor as a threat because he continued eating the carrot cake despite his presence in the kitchen. No one had eaten dinner yet, and Sandor was sure the boy was supposed to wait, but he didn’t care.

 

When he was done filling his cup, Sandor turned around and leaned against the counter. He stared at Bran over his cup as he drank from it, which caused Bran to freeze in place where he sat at the table, leaning over it to reach the cake, though Bran still slowly chewed on the food in his mouth. Bran glanced over at Sandor using only his eyes, and he perked up his eyebrows in inquisition.

 

“What?” Bran asked flatly all of a sudden, and Sandor raised his shoulders in a single shrug.

 

“Nothing,” Sandor said.

 

Bran swallowed his food, and then he leaned away from the table to sit properly in the dining chair. “Why are you staring at me?”

 

Sandor shrugged his shoulders again. “I’m not staring at you,” he said.

 

Bran looked back at the carrot cake on display upon the table, and then he looked at Sandor. With a deliberate slowness, he got up from his seat, and before Sandor could say anything else, Bran darted out of the dining room and into the living room. Sandor snorted in amusement, shaking his head. It was far too easy with that kid.

 

He lingered in the kitchen by himself for a while. From time to time, somebody came in to grab a drink from the counter or something off of the table to snack on while waiting for the cue to start dinner. Sandor didn’t think there were enough chairs to fit everybody in one spot. The living room was packed with people, and even though they had extra chairs brought in from the back patio, there still were not enough of them to cover all of the heads in the house. Sandor watched them come and go until one in particular came into the kitchen looking for him.

 

He hadn’t seen her since she got out of his car once they arrived at the house. Sansa walked up to him slowly, smiling with each step, and Sandor couldn’t help but narrow his eyes at her as he wondered what was on her mind. It wasn’t one of her usual smiles. It was more playful, and her eyes sparkled with mischief.

 

“All right,” Sandor said, putting down his cup on the counter, “what’s on your mind?”

 

“Nothing,” Sansa replied innocently, and she approached his side to take him by the arm and walk him towards the dining room. Sandor allowed her to lead the way. “I was just wondering if you would spend some time with me.”

 

“As long as it isn’t another board game,” Sandor told her firmly, having tired of them after the first day in the hospital.

 

“Nope,” Sansa announced in a cheery voice. “No board games.”

 

“Good,” Sandor said, and Sansa led him from the dining room into the living room. They weaved their way through a thick crowd of bodies, and Sansa let go of his arm to hold his hand as she brought him before the staircase.

 

Sandor thought of protesting the moment she took the first step onto the stairs, but he didn’t want to draw any attention to them. No one from the crowd was even bothering to look at them. They were all too busy talking and laughing over cider and liquor to notice as Sansa carefully led Sandor up the staircase to the second story. Sandor didn’t touch the railing. It was decorated with yards and yards of colorful tinsel looped around the balustrades and large green wreaths with red and silver bows hanging on the side of the railing that faced the living room. Arya and Gendry had long since disappeared from the staircase, though Sandor didn’t see them in the crowd. There was no telling where they had gotten off to.

 

Sansa brought him straight into her room, and she quietly closed the door behind Sandor. He heard her twist the lock with a _click_ , and his heart started pounding. There was a muted multicolor light shifting between tones on some kind of lamp display on Sansa’s desk, and she walked over to a normal lamp to turn it on. It filled the room with a dim orange light. When she noticed that he hadn’t moved away from the door, Sansa lost her look of surety. She approached him slowly, took him by the hand again, and walked him over to her bed.

 

“Sansa—” he began, but she cut him off.

 

“We’re just sitting on my bed,” she told him, plopping down onto the mattress. “There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”

 

“You locked the door,” Sandor said, still standing.

 

Sansa hadn’t let go of his hand yet. “Maybe I don’t want to be interrupted,” she said. “My family is nosy.”

 

With a soft sigh, Sandor sat down on the bed beside her. Sansa smiled brightly at his choice, and she scooted closer to him, pulling one of her legs onto the bed. Her hand still held onto his, her fingers rubbing his palm with light touches that tickled him.

 

“Okay,” he told her quietly, giving in to whatever it was she wanted. Either she just wanted alone time, a moment to talk, or a chance to discuss what was going on with—

 

Sansa leaned in close, pressing her lips to his mouth.

 

This was definitely not talking.

 

Her free hand cupped the side of his face as she kissed him, and Sandor returned the kiss, but then he pulled away from her. “Sansa,” he murmured, “I just got out of the hospital. I can’t—”

 

“No one said you had to do anything,” Sansa whispered back, and she captured his lips in another kiss before he could get a chance to protest again. It was hard to protest against that, though. She just said he didn’t have to do anything, and there was something very appealing in the thought of just lying back and doing nothing. Sandor deepened the kiss, forgetting himself in a brief moment of lust before he remembered there were people down there on the first floor. Lots and lots of people, and they were all related to _her_.

 

Sandor pulled away again, but he only managed to get about an inch away from Sansa. She held him close to her with one hand on the side of his face and the other on the back of his neck. “Sansa, your whole family is down there,” Sandor protested. “They’ll skin me alive—”

 

“No, they won’t,” she assured him, “because they won’t know. I locked the door, and besides, it’s kind of hot, isn’t it? Everyone down there while we’re up here, and they don’t know what we’re doing right over their heads—”

 

“What has gotten _in_ to you?” he asked, perplexed by this sudden behavior.

 

“You did,” she whispered against his lips, and Sandor felt the groan in the back of his throat rather than heard it before she crushed her lips against his mouth again in another heated kiss.

 

Sansa was careful not to touch him anywhere on his chest. She kept her hands away from it, remembering his injury. Instead of pushing him to the bed like she might have done before, Sansa pulled away from kissing him long enough to give him instructions. “Lie back,” she told him, and she quickly kissed him again before she pulled back to give him the ease of space. Sandor had to think about it again. Was this really such a good idea in his condition? What was she going to do, anyway? Sansa hadn’t touched his chest yet, so Sandor doubted it would be anything too risky.

 

He laid straight back against her bed since it was the easiest thing to do without twisting his body at an awkward and uncomfortable angle. His legs hung over the edge of the bed, and Sansa’s hands went immediately for his belt buckle. _Oh_ , he thought dimly. So, that was what she wanted. Her hands worked quickly and deftly to get his buckle undone, pants unbuttoned, and zipper out of the way. Before he knew it, she had tugged his pants down his hips to his thighs, and not long after that, his boxers followed them.

 

Her hand wrapped around him, and she began to stroke up and down in quick movements. It wasn’t much longer before Sansa had him hard in her grasp, and Sandor closed his eyes against the shadows playing across her ceiling above him. Despite the knowledge of her family downstairs, there was something highly erotic about letting her do whatever she wanted while they were all smiling and laughing in unawares. Sansa squeezed her fingers around his base, and Sandor groaned aloud, encouraging her to quicken her pace on him.

 

Her free hand traveled lower to massage the soft skin just below his shaft, and Sandor lost himself in the sensations. She was getting exploratory, and her hand moved out to his inner thigh to touch him there as well. Sandor didn’t try to hide any of his moans. Each sound of pleasure worked as encouragement for Sansa. Her weight left the bed, but Sansa’s hands didn’t leave him, so Sandor barely registered the move until his nerves jumped at the sensation of a warm tongue dragging over his sensitive tip.

 

He lifted his head briefly to look at her. Sansa was between his legs, kneeling, and he dropped his head to the mattress again to stare at the ceiling. Sandor had to close his mouth this time, though, because Sansa took him into her mouth more than just an inch like before. She didn’t take him in all the way, just as far as she felt comfortable attempting on a first try. The other time she only focused on the tip, but this time she allowed her whole mouth to move over his length. Her tongue grazed the underside as her lips tightened around him, and Sandor felt all of his nerves shudder in response at once.

 

Sansa moved her head back and forth at a steady pace, and Sandor balled up the sheets in his fists. She was learning all of this quickly, whether it was instinct or secondhand knowledge. Her free hand gripped his base, moving back in forth in tune with her mouth, squeezing hard but not too hard. Sansa swirled her tongue against the underside, pulling back far enough to focus on sucking at the tip. Sandor felt himself building up to his climax as she worked herself on him, and unlike the first time, he didn’t have time to warn her.

 

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” he hissed out, and every muscle shuddered to completion. Near the foot of the bed, Sandor heard Sansa cough all of a sudden as she pulled back from him, and he felt a little guilty this time for not warning her. His brain was mostly dead, though, and Sansa wasn’t at the foot of the bed for too long. She got up from the floor, and crawled onto the bed beside him. She was mindful again not to touch his chest or lay her head on it. Instead, she just lay beside him, pressing her nose against his shoulder. Sandor felt her fingers running idly along his arm.

 

Sandor managed to pull his boxers back up in place to cover himself again, and he hoisted his pants up as well, though he didn’t bother to buckle them. Sansa remained beside him, and eventually, she lifted her head from his shoulder to look at him across the bed.

 

“Are you hungry?” Sansa asked all of a sudden, her voice barely a whisper.

 

Sandor couldn’t stop himself. He huffed in amusement, turning his head to look at her. “Am I hungry?” he repeated her question.

 

Sansa looked indignant. “Yes,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

 

“Why?” he asked.

 

“Because I think they’re about to have supper downstairs, and we can go down and get something to eat,” she suggested innocently, but all Sandor could think about was a different type of eating, and it didn’t involve food.

 

“I think I need a moment,” he said, breathing slowly through his mouth.

 

Sansa smirked at him. It was so unlike her, he thought, but it suited her. “Well, how about I go downstairs first,” she told him, “and then you can come down some time after me. That way they don’t see both of us coming down at the same time.”

 

“Why?” Sandor asked. “We both went up at the same time.”

 

“There’s a difference.”

 

“No, there’s not,” Sandor protested, but Sansa got up from the bed anyway. She bounced her way off of it, and Sandor lifted his head to look at her.

 

“I’ll be downstairs,” she said. “I’ll see you there?”

 

“In a little bit,” he replied, and Sansa smirked at him again before she turned around on her heel and headed for the door. She unlocked it, stepped out, and closed it behind her, but not before looking back at Sandor one last time with a smile on her face.

 

When the door clicked shut, Sandor laid his head against the bed once more. He closed his eyes again, but he reopened them shortly. Remembering his pants were in disarray, Sandor rearranged them as quickly as possible before pushing himself up from Sansa’s bed. He didn’t want to stay up here too long. With his luck, someone would have the unfortunate circumstance of walking in on him alone in her room. All sorts of uncomfortable questions would be raised at that, so Sandor got up from her bed and left the room.

 

He shut the door behind himself, making his way down the stairs. The crowd had dispersed since they had been upstairs. What small groups that were left in the living room were sitting down and eating, and everyone else had moved off to somewhere else to do the same. Sandor wasn’t hungry, though, so he didn’t stop in the kitchen to grab something to eat. Instead, he made his way out to the back patio under a now dark sky. Stars were poking out, twinkling against the black, and grey wisps of cloud glowed from the moonlight behind them.

 

“Where’ve you been?” Arya asked from a bench to right, and Sandor looked over at her. There was a fire pit roaring with crackling flame, and Arya was sitting on a bench not far from it. Heat emanated off of the flames, warming him up out here in the freezing cold, as Sandor thought of his answer.

 

“Wandering,” Sandor said, even though it wasn’t entirely the truth.

 

“My sister thinks I’m crazy,” Arya said next. It was like she didn’t even hear his answer. Her voice was flat, and she didn’t sound too happy about the news she was sharing with him.

 

“I take it the two of you had a fight?” Sandor asked out of curiosity, and he took a seat on the bench.

 

“Not exactly,” Arya revealed, looking over at him. “I overheard her talking with Gendry about it. She doesn’t believe me. She doesn’t think anyone is after her.”

 

“Maybe it’s best not to push it,” Sandor suggested. “We can watch her without her believing it.”

 

“But what if Sansa just walks out on her own one day because she doesn’t take it seriously?” Arya threw back. “What if someone just comes up off the street and snatches her? Do we tell Mum and Dad? Do we tell the police? Would _anybody_ believe us, or would they all think I’m crazy?”

 

Sandor swallowed against a lump in his throat. “My advice is don’t push it. It raises too many questions. I can talk her into being safer. Tell her it makes me feel more relaxed that way, especially after what happened to you. She’s always around you or me. If you ever see anybody you don’t know show interest in her, get her away quick.” Sandor shook his head as he stared at the fire. “Aside from the that, I don’t know what to do.”

 

“You can talk to Renly,” Arya said, lowering her voice in case anyone was within earshot. “They want him, right? So, he started this mess? Get him to clean it up, then. Get him to . . . watch Sansa or hire someone else to do it.”

 

“I’m going to talk to him,” Sandor told her without looking at her. “I just got out of the hospital, and your parents invited me over for the holidays. Right now, there’s a ton of people to watch over Sansa, including you and me. When the holiday visit is over, I’ll take care of it with him.”

 

Sandor never expected to be having this conversation with Arya. It was all so strange, and yet not at the same time. Arya was handling all of it well on the surface, but Sandor could only imagine the inner turmoil she must have been facing. One moment, she was calm, and the next, she couldn’t stop shaking and she exploded all over the place. Worst of all, Sandor felt like this was his fault. If it wasn’t for him and his involvement, Arya never would have been put through that hell with Ramsay. Everything she was going through, it was all his fault.

 

And he didn’t know how to fix it.

 

“If you ever need to talk about anything,” Sandor began, turning his head to look at Arya. Her face was highlighted in the glow of the fire, casting eerie shadows upon her face. “Anything at all, you can come to me. You know that, right?”

 

Arya glanced over at him. The shadows shifted and changed on her face. “Yeah,” she said softly, “I know that.”

 

Sandor looked back at the fire. “You and your boyfriend okay?”

 

Arya snorted at his question. “Yeah, we’re fine,” she told him. “We yell at each other sometimes. It’s nothing, though. We’re both as stubborn as mules.”

 

Sandor nodded his head, but he didn’t say anything. “Where is he now?”

 

“Eating,” Arya said.

 

“You’re not hungry?”

 

Arya shook her head.

 

“Me neither,” Sandor told her, and the fire crackled on before them, emitting just enough heat to keep them comfortable on the bench. Sandor looked around their back yard, just barely being able to make out the wooden fence surrounding it in the dark and the trees along the edges. “Maybe we should go inside, though,” he suggested.

 

“Okay,” Arya agreed, and she hopped off the bench. Sandor got up as well. Arya walked up to the door, and she held it open for him. Sandor walked in with her right behind him. Arya shut the door, enclosing them in the warmth of the house again, which was much stronger than the fire from the fire pit.

 

Suddenly, without warning, Arya hugged him from the side.

 

Sandor froze in place, not knowing what to do, but it wasn’t too serious of a hug. Arya didn’t linger, and he only managed to pat her shoulder before she pulled away from him and hurried off before he could say anything about it.

 

Sandor didn’t know what to make of it, but he pushed aside his thoughts and headed for the dining room to join everybody else for supper before they wondered where he had gotten off to without them.

 

 


	81. A Gambler Pays His Dues

_* * *_

 

Jaime stared at the crackling fire, mulling over his thoughts. He passed his hand over his face. His fingers brushed over the prickly hairs, short and scratchy to the touch. His beard had grown in again, but he hadn’t had the desire to shave it off yet. As the flames flickered before his eyesight, Jaime glanced over at his other hand. His elbow was propped on the armrest of the couch, a clear glass of amber liquid dangling there between his fingers. It reflected the glimmer of the flames in each facet of the crystal, and he twirled it to watch the play of light with mild interest. His mind was already muggy from the alcohol, and he brought the glass back to his lips to take another sip.

 

The front door to the house opened up just at that moment, and Jaime pulled the glass away from his mouth as Brienne came into the house. She shut the door in a hurry, shucking snow off the shoulders of her coat before pulling it off. Jaime watched as Brienne quickly hung up her coat beside the door. When she finally turned around to face him, Brienne paused amidst all of her anxious movements as her gaze fell downwards and focused on something in his lap. She became as still as a statue. Brienne stared at his lap, and Jaime glanced down to follow the path of her eyes. They had landed on the glass of scotch he had lowered to rest upon his thigh.

 

“You’re drinking again,” Brienne immediately said without any infliction in her tone, but Jaime rolled his eyes all the same.

 

“Yes, I’m drinking again,” Jaime replied in a flippant manner. “What else do you expect me to do? No one will hire me, so I can’t get a job, and everywhere I go in town, they point and make faces at me. I’m better off staying home,” he added quietly. He couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice. Jaime stared down at the glass of scotch in his lap. After a moment of hesitation, he brought it back to his lips for another sip. “And it gets boring being here all alone most of the time.”

 

Brienne stood by the door without a response for what felt like minutes passing in silence. Eventually, she walked over to him with slow and careful steps. She took a seat beside him on the cushions, and Jaime felt them sink downward with her added weight. Brienne laid her hand upon his arm, her fingers giving him a reassuring squeeze.

 

“Maybe we should move away,” Brienne suggested, though she only said it for his benefit. Jaime could tell by the tone of her voice.

 

“No,” Jaime immediately said, shaking his head. “Everything we know is here. We’ve built our lives here. We shouldn’t _have_ to move away—”

 

“It was only a suggestion,” Brienne told him. Jaime felt her hand rub along his arm. “It could be good for you. We could start over somewhere new. Just you and I.”

 

“I won’t run away,” Jaime said with finality. His jaw tightened against the very thought. “I will _not_ run away. I’m not a coward. They can’t scare me off. Let them throw all the harsh words at me they want to. They won’t get rid of me like I’m some common flea.”

 

Brienne’s hand stilled along his arm, and she patted it gently. “You need to stop drinking, though, Jaime. You need to have your head clear for the moment when you need to use it again. All of this alcohol isn’t good for you. I need you here with me. I need you focused. I can’t be the only one with my head properly on my shoulders.”

 

She had a point. That much he could admit to himself. Jaime stared down at the glass of scotch in his hand. Leaning forward ever so slowly, he placed the glass onto the surface of the coffee table. The flickering flames in the fireplace across from the coffee table caught his eyes, and he looked up at it. Jaime looked into it, and he blinked.

 

“Jaime,” Brienne began slowly, “I need your advice.”

 

Jaime felt a small laugh bubble up in the back of his throat as he leaned back into the couch. He turned his head to glance over at her, tilting his head to the side with an amused expression upon his face. “You need my advice now?” he asked. “It’s a strange twist of fate, isn’t it? I usually go to you for advice because of my big fuck ups, and now you’re coming to me.”

 

“This is serious, Jaime,” Brienne said, her voice falling to a soft whisper.

 

Jaime felt his brow wrinkle with confusion. It wasn’t like Brienne to speak softly. She spoke her mind with steadiness, conviction, and a loud voice. Whatever was on her mind, it was serious enough if it brought out this reaction from her. Jaime put aside his ability to turn everything into joke, looking forward as he tried to muster up the courage to be what she wanted him to be.

 

“What is it?” he asked her, realizing his voice had fallen quiet too.

 

There was a moment of hesitation crackling on the air between them. Jaime even heard the small breath Brienne drew inward through her lips as she parted them in preparation to speak, but at first no sound came out. She halted on her breath, caught on an indecisive notion inside her head. Jaime knew Brienne well, and he knew everything about her. This was one of her quirks, and he recognized it like her eye color or her laugh.

 

“It’s about Ramsay Bolton,” Brienne told him.

 

Jaime immediately turned his head to look at her. The name drew up nothing but bad memories for Jaime as well as current panic, but Brienne was fine. He was fine. The news couldn’t be that bad. “Ramsay?” he inquired. “What about him?”

 

Brienne blinked, her expression going blank. “He’s dead, Jaime.”

 

Jaime heard it, but he didn’t process it. “He’s dead?”

 

Brienne nodded her head, biting on her bottom lip for just a second. “He’s dead,” she repeated. “He was killed by Arya Stark. He had kidnapped her, and she got a hold of a kitchen knife. Ramsay was found with almost twenty puncture wounds in his back and shoulders.” Brienne closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. “The one at the top of his spine was a death blow when it hit.”

 

Jaime sat still in shocked silence. It took him a moment to realize his mouth was hanging open, and when he did, he closed it. His unfocused eyes stared off at nothing in particular beside Brienne’s head. “He kidnapped Arya Stark?” Jaime repeated, unable to grasp the information so readily. What in the world would Ramsay want with a young girl?

 

_Never mind_ , Jaime immediately thought, pushing the question from his mind.

 

“Yes,” Brienne said, “but . . . there’s more.”

 

“There’s more?” Jaime asked, his eyes widening as he looked at her. “How much more can there possibly be?”

 

Brienne reached out to grasp Jaime’s forearm. His gaze fell to her hand, staring at her tight grip on him, before he raised his eyes to meet hers again. Her blue eyes were strikingly bright—and afraid. “You have to promise me, Jaime, that you won’t share this information with anyone else. It’s dangerous, what I’m about to tell you. It must stay between you and me. No one else can know.”

 

“Tell me right now what it is,” Jaime said. He didn’t like where this was going. His heart was pounding fiercely in his ribcage, so hard it felt like it might burst.

 

Brienne swallowed past a catch in her throat. Jaime saw it as it bobbed up and down. Her eyes drifted down from his to her lap almost as if she was ashamed of herself. Jaime had not seen a look like that on Brienne’s face in all the time he had known her. It made him worried, and he reached out to lay his hand upon her forearm as well. Somehow he had drawn himself closer to her on the couch.

 

“Someone else was there,” Brienne explained, and she raised her eyes to Jaime’s concerned gaze, “in the cabin with Arya Stark and Ramsay Bolton. Arya attacked him, too. She stabbed him in the chest with the same kitchen knife, and then she ran. Ramsay is dead, but the other one is alive. He was brought to the hospital and treated back to health, and he was released today.” Brienne squeezed her eyes shut again as if the very words pained her. She opened them, but she didn’t even look at Jaime this time. “The police, however, have erased all traces of his involvement. Arya’s official report makes no mention of him. Only Ramsay.”

 

“Who?” Jaime asked, barely hearing his own voice. It sounded so far away. His ears were ringing as if a loud blast had gone off, shattering his eardrums until he could hear nothing but silence and the ringing that filled it.

 

Brienne lifted her eyes to his. “Sandor Clegane,” she answered softly.

 

Jaime pulled back from her. He looked away, and then he rose from the couch. Before Jaime knew it, he was pacing around the coffee table. It was an old habit, walking around tables when he couldn’t sit still. Brienne’s look of shame finally made sense to him. She had trusted Clegane. She had befriended Clegane. Jaime himself had started to see the man under a different light, but everything was changing faster than either of them could keep up with. Clegane wouldn’t have been at Ramsay’s cabin for no reason. He wouldn’t have been _stabbed_ by Arya Stark for no reason. In the middle of his pacing, Jaime brought his hands to his face to cover it. He rubbed it roughly, pulling his hands away and dropping them to his sides. Jaime balled his hands into fists.

 

“Does she remember anything?” Jaime blurted out, facing Brienne from across the coffee table. He managed to pause long enough from his pacing to stand still as he asked his question. “Have they questioned her thoroughly? Have _you_ questioned her thoroughly? Does she remember him being there? Is she being scared into keeping silence?”

 

“Jaime, stop,” Brienne told him with a firm voice, and she held up her hand at him. When he bit down on his tongue, she lowered her hand and answered him. “I haven’t been able to talk to her,” Brienne revealed. “I’m not on the case. I wasn’t one of the responders. They’ve already marked it as solved and over with. Loras was the first one on the scene, though, and Jaime . . . ” Brienne hesitated with saying more, but she had already given up the rest of the information. What was one more piece of evidence to help him understand the situation?

 

“Tell me,” Jaime demanded. He had to know. He _needed_ to know. It was the thirst and drive of the police officer in him, still beating there in his heart and coursing throughout his veins inside of his blood. They could take away his badge, but they could never fully eradicate it from him.

 

“Loras,” Brienne said, her voice becoming unsteady, “is involved in covering up Sandor’s association with the case. I overheard him talking about it. He doesn’t think I heard him, but—”

 

“Report him!” Jaime insisted, gesturing at her wildly. How could she not even consider it as her first option? If Brienne expected to do anything about it, then she had to go to Chief Inspector Selmy before it was too late.

 

Brienne pushed herself up from the couch with her palms, and she stood taller than Jaime. Even with a table between them, the difference was obvious.

 

“ _Report_ him?” Brienne shot back through her teeth. “Report the new golden boy when I’m the laughing stock of the whole damn department? The only person who has even been remotely sticking up for me is Loras, and you think I should _report_ him? Where will that get me, Jaime? They already don’t want me there because of—”

 

“Because of me,” Jaime finished for her, his voice trailing off.

 

Brienne’s anger died down, but she wasn’t any happier about the situation. Her hands balled up into tightly knotted fists at her sides, knuckles stretched and white from the strain of her grip. Jaime stared at them like there wasn’t anything else more interesting in the world than to be looking at those fists. Brienne had punched him a few times with those iron fists of hers when they had gotten into a physical fight once, though it was long before they ever dated each other. Jaime had kept trying to bring her down to the ground to pin her because he wouldn’t swing at her, but Brienne had taken every open opportunity to cut into him with her knuckles.

 

It was funny, thinking about how those hands that had once intentionally hurt him now liked to be run through his hair in a comforting gesture of love. It was funny, he thought, but it had nothing to do with the situation. Jaime was just trying his best not to think about the painful reminder that it was his fault her life had fallen to shambles around her, too, and there was nothing he could do to fix it. All he could do was ball his hands into fists as well, and wish for something to punch.

 

Pushing those things from his thoughts, Jaime tried to focus on the bigger picture before him. Loras was involved in covering up Sandor’s presence at the cabin. Arya was keeping silent on stabbing Sandor in her attempt to escape, citing only Ramsay in her report. Sandor was out again. _He is probably home right now_ , Jaime thought, but then he doubted it. What was Sandor Clegane doing with the likes of Ramsay Bolton? Did Arya remember him, or was she simply afraid to speak up?

 

“We have to do something,” Jaime said, breaking the silence. “We can’t just sit around and do nothing.”

 

“That’s why I came to you, Jaime,” Brienne admitted, her hands loosening at her sides. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t go to Chief Inspector about this. I can’t ask another officer to help me investigate under the table. I don’t know who to turn to or where to go. I need your advice. What would you do if you were in my shoes? How would you handle this?”

 

Jaime stared down at the polished wooden surface of the coffee table. It reflected the amber flames of the fire behind him, shifting and glistening with their glow. Shadows danced across the wood like ghostly wisps of arms reaching out from the between the crevices of light and dark, falling upon the table and spilling out over the floor and climbing over the couch and reaching up the walls. His eyes followed them across the ceiling to the spot above his head. It was an eerie sight to behold, and Jaime felt almost suffocated by it. His discomfort was high, palpable in the air through his breath, quick and shallow. He had always been the golden boy, so to be the ostracized one was not something Jaime thought he would ever get used to being. He had been dressed in golden armor, even if it was rusted in places underneath. People had loved him. People had cheered for him, and now, they could barely raise their eyes to look at him except in hatred.

 

Jaime scowled at the thought, though. Who were _they_ to judge him? Not one of them had the right. They all had their dark secrets, their own scandals hidden underneath the surface and yet to be uncovered for prying eyes. Jaime could rip the cloth off of all of them and expose them for who they were, too, if he wanted to. He knew plenty of dirt on a lot of people to get a sizable reaction out of them, but that wasn’t his goal. It wasn’t in Jaime to be petty in those ways. He was petty in his own right, of course, but it was more personal things that he saved it for.

 

What he wanted this time, though, was something different. He wanted to prove himself. He didn’t need a badge to do it. He had no desire to be a vigilante, but he could get to the bottom of things without exposing himself. Jaime had played undercover enough times to know what it took to remain hidden in plain sight, and he had done stakeouts before as well. He knew how to look for information. Jaime knew how to ask all of the right questions, and he knew all of the right people to go to in order to ask them. He had been on the force a lot longer than Brienne, so his knowledge was more extensive than hers. All she had to do was ask, and she had just asked him.

 

It was good to have a plan, but it was reckless to go into it without working out all of the finer details beforehand. Jaime knew he had a bad habit of jumping into things headfirst without thinking things through, so he took a deep breath to slow down the tremulous beating of his heart, and he walked around the coffee table back to the couch to sit down again. The cushions sank beneath him, plush and inviting. After a few minutes of silence, Brienne lowered herself back to the couch as well.

 

Jaime turned to look at her, his eyes roving over Brienne’s face: her watery blue eyes, set alight by the fire, and the sharp corners of her jaw and nose and mouth, all painted with the shadows from the flames. Her expression shifted and muted and sharpened again beneath them.

 

In a normal circumstance he would have cracked a smile for her, but this wasn’t a normal circumstance.

 

“I have a plan,” Jaime said.

 

 


	82. Watch My Silhouette

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** At the end of this chapter, I’ve included a list of songs so far whose lyrics inspired the chapter names, covering Chapter 73 through Chapter 82!

_* * *_

 

The window was glazed with little veins of ice like the white tendrils of winter’s fingers slowly creeping upon it, taking the building into its grip, while outside the sky was grey with deep, heavyset clouds. They were darker on the horizon than they were closer to her. Sansa had paused mid-walk and approached the window because she had noticed the storm on the horizon through the glass. Those dark rolling clouds would bring with them heavy snowfall and torrential winds, but Sansa wasn’t afraid of them. At this time of year, they were coming sooner or later. She stared for a moment, but then she pulled away from the window at the end of the hall and continued towards Sandor’s apartment.

 

Sandor had gone home the other evening before most of her family had departed from the house. He had left after telling her not to leave the house for any reason unless she was with both of her parents or him, which surprised Sansa if she was honest with herself. She didn’t expect Sandor to take Arya’s story this seriously. Even though Sansa nodded her head in agreement to satisfy him and received a gentle kiss on the forehead afterwards, she had left the house today to come over to his apartment without anything being out of the ordinary. Of course, Sansa didn’t expect anything to be out of the ordinary. Arya wasn’t in her right state of mind, and Sandor was in no condition to handle extra added stress because of her sister’s fanciful imagination.

 

Stepping up to his apartment door, Sansa raised her knuckles to rap them against the surface, but she held them back just an inch before touching it. She didn’t want to wake Sandor if he was taking a nap. When Sansa had tried calling him earlier, there was no answer. The phone rang straight to voicemail. Remembering her keychain, Sansa glanced down at her purse to retrieve it. One of the keys was a key to his apartment. Sandor had given it to her a few weeks ago because of her habit of showing up sometimes without getting a hold of him first to let him know. He had said he didn’t want her waiting outside in the hallway all alone in case he wasn’t home one day when she came over to visit.

 

Sliding the key into the doorknob, Sansa unlocked it and stepped inside. It was quiet inside of his apartment, and none of the lights were on, so the whole place was shrouded in a grey light from the sheer curtains on the windows. Sansa was reminded briefly of the storm outside, and she closed the door behind herself as quietly as possible. She made sure to lock it again before she put her keys away, and then she walked further into Sandor’s apartment while looking around both ways out of curiosity. He wasn’t anywhere in the living room or the kitchen, so Sansa looked towards the hallway and saw his bedroom door was cracked open, light pouring through it into the dark hallway.

 

Her feet took her towards his cracked bedroom door, and she gently pushed her palm against the smooth surface. The door gave way before her, opening without a single creak. With the sheet pulled up to his chest but just below his shoulders, Sandor was lying upon his back with his eyes peacefully shut. His chest rose and fell with one slow breath drawn in after another, but other than that, he didn’t move. It was in the middle of the day, and he was fast asleep. Sansa didn’t blame him either. With the seriousness of his injury, the doctors told him he needed all the rest possible to recover. Sandor was given time off from work, and while he could have been finding something to do, he ended up spending his extra time sleeping instead.

 

Sansa found herself smiling at the sight, and she pulled her hand away from the doorframe where she had propped it. She stepped into his bedroom, her careful feet not making a sound against the carpet, and walked her way around his bed to the side opposite of the one he occupied. She stopped at the edge of his bed. With slow movements, Sansa slipped her purse from her shoulder and let it hit the floor. She peeled off her scarf, hat, and coat, letting those fall too, and slid her feet out of her boots. Reaching for the hem of her sweater, she pulled that over her head and dropped it on top of the pile of building clothes. She was down to her skirt, leggings, and a dark purple shirt. Sansa glanced down at herself. She took a minute to consider taking off her skirt too, and given Sandor’s condition, it didn’t seem likely that it would matter much in the end.

 

Sliding her skirt down her legs, she stepped out of it and lifted up the sheet by the edge to crawl into his bed. Sansa scooted closer to Sandor underneath it. Heat emanated off of his body, and she drew as close to him as space would allow, her arm draping over his waist and her mouth pressing against his shoulder. Sandor smelled crisp and clean like fresh soap, and Sansa smiled to herself that at least he hadn’t lost the energy to shower. She raised her head from the pillow to gaze at his chest, but Sandor was wearing one of his white t-shirts. It covered up the bandage over his injury. She could still see it beneath the white fabric, though. It was obvious, though partially hidden, in its thickness and how it raised his shirt in one spot over the rest of it.

 

Sansa lowered her head to the pillow, sighing deeply, and closed her eyes as she pressed her face against his shoulder once more. She breathed in the clean scent of him and relaxed with him beside her, even if he was asleep. However, the arm she had around his waist couldn’t remain still. She tried to adjust herself under the covers, occasionally moving her arm about with her. When she had finally stilled against him, Sansa found her fingers tracing little circles and playing upon his shirt underneath the sheet. She didn’t want to wake him, and yet she did. It was boring being up all alone by herself, and Sansa was sure he could still rest in bed while awake. He didn’t have to be asleep to get rest.

 

Her innocent ministrations had the desired effect of waking Sandor up. A deep noise echoed in the back of his throat, and then he shifted slightly where he lay. Sansa tilted her head back to look up at him, and Sandor’s eyelids fluttered open until he was blinking them blearily at the ceiling above his head. His lips parted as he stared at it, and he turned his head upon the pillow to look to his right at her. Sansa smiled at him, keeping her arm around his upper waist, but Sandor narrowed his eyes at the sight of her beside him in bed. She wasn’t expecting that look on his face, so she frowned at it.

 

“What are doing here?” Sandor asked her through his haze of drowsiness, his eyelids barely open. His voice was deeper than normal, and it sounded scratchy.

 

“I came to see you,” Sansa answered, thinking that was enough.

 

“You shouldn’t . . . ” Sandor began, but his words were slow and he trailed off as if he didn’t know how to finish his sentence. He turned his head to look upward at the ceiling again, raising his hand to his face and running it from forehead to chin before he let it fall back to the bed again. “I told you not to leave the house without me or your parents,” Sandor finished.

 

“You’re still taking Arya’s story seriously?” Sansa asked in a whisper, raising her eyebrows as she said it. Sansa hadn’t said it directly to her sister, but Arya’s story didn’t make any sense. There was no reason why anyone would be after Sansa. She wasn’t anyone important and neither were their parents. It was just Arya’s way of coping with such a traumatic situation, and Sandor should have realized that as well.

 

Sandor turned his head on the pillow to face her again. His look had gone from a wrinkled forehead to a full-fledged frown. “I do,” he said, “and so should you.”

 

Sansa was surprised at his answer. “Why?”

 

“Because,” Sandor told her with an edge to his voice, “if it’s true, you’re putting yourself in danger and calling your sister a liar. How do you think she’ll feel if someone does come by and snatches you up? She tried to warn you, and you called her crazy. Imagine the guilt and the resentment.”

 

Sansa lowered her eyes to his shoulder, feeling her face begin to burn. Her hand balled itself into a fist, taking a bit of his shirt with it, and Sandor must have felt it.

 

“Look, Sansa,” he said, slower this time, “I’m not trying to make you feel bad, but you don’t need to dismiss this. Your sister is not crazy. She’s trying to protect you. Let her do that, even if it is a lie. If it is, it’s worth it. Nobody gets hurt, and she feels better. How is that a bad thing?”

 

Sandor had a point, even if Sansa didn’t want to readily admit it. She bit back on her tongue, wanting to say something to refute it, but realized it wasn’t worth it. He was right, and she didn’t want to make Arya feel anymore abnormal than she already felt right now for what she had gone through. It was splashed all over the papers, and Arya was going to have to go back to school to that to face all of that. Sandor was right. Sansa should at least support her sister, even if it was a fantasy borne from Arya’s mind. Everyone else was going to look at her funny, so Arya didn’t need that from Sansa, too.

 

“All right,” Sansa whispered against his shoulder. “You win. I won’t sneak out alone again, okay?”

 

“Good,” he replied. “I’ll sleep better at night.”

 

“You too?” Sansa asked, tilting her head back to look up at him again.

 

“Yes, me too.”

 

Sansa was quiet as she traced the tips of her fingers against his shirt once more. “I didn’t know you took it that seriously,” she said.

 

“I do,” Sandor answered her.

 

“Okay,” Sansa said.

 

“Okay,” Sandor repeated after her, and Sansa stopped tracing patterns upon his shirt to wrap her arm more fully around his waist and hug him close. She caught the sound of a painful hiss drawn inward through his lips, though, and Sansa pulled away from him. Lifting herself from the bed, she looked down at Sandor.

 

“Did I hurt you?” she asked quickly.

 

“No,” he said, grimacing. “My chest . . . ”

 

Sansa looked over to his nightstand, spotting a bottle of prescription medicine. She slipped from the bed and called out to Sandor, “I’ll be right back.”

 

In nothing but her t-shirt, panties, and leggings, Sansa hurried down the hallway to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator, saw a glass of water, and scooped it into her hand. Closing the refrigerator door, she rushed back to the bedroom to Sandor’s nightstand. She put down the cold glass to take a moment to open his medication bottle, and then she held out the pill close to Sandor’s mouth for him to take. He took it, and she placed her hand behind his head to help him lift it, grabbing the glass with her other hand. She held the rim against his lips, and he drank a small amount of water to help him wash the pill down. Sansa removed her hand, and Sandor dropped his head back to the pillow. She knew it would take a while to work, but at least now he had it.

 

Leaving the glass on top of his nightstand, Sansa circled his bed and returned to his side under the covers. It was warm and toasty under the sheet and blanket compared to outside of it, but maybe that was because she was wearing so little now.

 

“Thank you,” Sandor told her quietly.

 

“You’re welcome,” she whispered back. Sansa pressed her mouth gently against his shoulder, closing her eyes. After a moment of silence, she spoke again. Her voice was muffled against his t-shirt. “You know,” Sansa added almost as an afterthought, “there’s a storm coming our way.”

 

“Is there?”

 

“Yes,” she said.

 

“Why did you come over, then?” he asked her, a note of curiosity in his voice. Sansa felt the corner of her mouth quirk upwards in a little smile.

 

“Because,” she said softly, “I wanted to have an excuse to not go home so soon.”

 

Sandor let out a huff of air. She knew, had he been better, it would have been a snort. “So, you decide to get snowed in with me?”

 

“That’s the plan,” Sansa answered, and she looked up at him. “Why? Is it a bad plan?”

 

Sandor let out another huff. “No,” he said. “It means I can keep an eye on you, even when I can’t do much.”

 

Sansa almost said something he wouldn’t have liked to that, but then she chose not to. She rolled her bottom lip underneath her teeth, and bit down on it. “Arya won’t like it,” she teased, “you taking her job away from her.”

 

Sandor made a funny noise in the back of his throat. “It’s not her job,” he said. “It’s mine. She’ll get used to it.”

 

“I don’t know,” Sansa said in a sing-song voice. “Arya and I have been looking out for each other for years. She might feel you are encroaching on her territory.”

 

“I’ll encroach if I want to,” Sandor responded sourly, and Sansa laughed at his remark.

 

“I’m telling Arya,” she teased.

 

“You go ahead and tell her,” he challenged. “She can fight me for it. When I’m better. No knives. I’m not fighting her if she has a knife.”

 

Sansa laughed again, glad that he could find the humor in it. She tilted her head down and placed a kiss upon his cloth-covered shoulder, snuggling close to him. “You smell clean,” she said aloud.

 

“I’m not so wounded I can’t take a shower,” Sandor told her.

 

“What if you were?”

 

“I’d crawl into the bath and lay there,” he said.

 

Sansa couldn’t stop laughing at him. “Well, what if you lived in medieval times and there weren’t any showers?”

 

“What kind of a question is that?” Sandor asked, turning his head to look down at her. Sansa felt him move, so she glanced up at him.

 

Sansa shrugged her shoulders despite the fact that she was lying down in bed. “A question like any other,” she told him. When he stared at her funny, Sansa wrinkled her nose at him. “What?” she asked. “I can’t make conversation?”

 

Sandor turned his head away from her, settling it comfortably upon the pillow. “Well, if it was medieval times, I wouldn’t care how I smelled. But we’ve got plumbing these days. Plumbing is good.”

 

Sansa giggled at his answer. “You’re such a dork.”

 

“You like calling me that.”

 

“I do,” she murmured, and she trailed her fingers slowly up his torso one by one as if walking her hand across his chest. Sansa glanced up to gauge his reaction. Sandor tilted his head somewhat to look down, but other than that, there was no other expression on his face. “How are you feeling now?” Sansa asked him.

 

“Better,” he said, his voice low. “The meds are working.”

 

“No more pain?”

 

Sandor shook his head. “Not right now.”

 

Sansa didn’t mean to be so forward or so bold while he was still injured, but he had awakened in her a fascination with the feelings physical touch could bring. She reminded herself of what she had done for him in her bedroom back at her parents’ house. It had excited her, too, even if it was meant for Sandor. Sansa had liked awakening his lust because it awakened something in her as well, and she couldn’t get the memories out of her head. She thought about them all the time whenever she was alone. She thought about how he made her feel, and her hand would venture between her legs to touch herself. All the while, she would close her eyes and think of him.

 

Her hand slid back down his side, scraping fingernails gently as she went. It was on his good side and not his injured side, so she didn’t upset his bandages or get too close to his wound. Sandor closed his eyes, drawing in a longer breath than usual. When her hand ventured to the edge of his shirt, she brushed her fingers along his body to lift the hem out of the way. Her touch glided along the edge of his boxers, and when she hooked her thumb playfully beneath the elastic band, Sandor spoke up at last.

 

“Sansa,” he breathed out quietly, and she lifted her eyes to his face.

 

Sandor had turned his head towards her on the pillow, gazing out at her with his dark eyes. They weren’t dark from lust. They were just normal, but they looked heavy with weariness.

 

“Can we just lay here?” he asked after a moment of silence had passed between them.

 

Sansa didn’t feel unwanted or unloved because of his words. She knew he was hurt and recuperating, and maybe she shouldn’t have been so curious at a time like this. If he didn’t have the energy for it, then she shouldn’t push him. Sansa knew if the tables were turned she wouldn’t want him doing that to her, so she nodded her head and stretched her arm across his middle. Snuggling close to his side, she rested her head against his shoulder. Sandor rested his chin upon the top of her head, and Sansa smiled against the fabric of his t-shirt.

 

“I’m glad you’re here,” Sandor murmured, and in a way Sansa thought it almost sounded like his way of saying _I love you_ without actually saying the words. She had noticed he had trouble saying it. Outside of his first time of blurting it out, Sandor had never said the phrase but the one time after she had said it first. It had been only a week ago, and it had sounded forced to her. Sansa remembered feeling hurt because she had questioned its authenticity, but then she had tried to remind herself that these were new things both of them were getting used to, and she was young. Sandor was older, set in his ways, and while change came easy for her, it did not come so easy for him.

 

“I’m glad I came,” she whispered right back, and Sandor adjusted his head above her almost like he was nestling against her. Sansa closed her eyes, and before she knew it, sleep had come upon her and sent her into a world of dreams.

 

Vividly, her mind pictured a majestic castle in the sky like something out of a fairytale from her youth. She could see the mountains in the distance through the open window, the white world beyond it covered in snowfall. In the distance a waterfall spilled into the yawning canyon surrounding her castle in the clouds. It was as if she perched upon the top of a mountain, standing above the entire world. A flock of dark birds careened through the mists in the sky, and Sansa watched them as they flew off out of sight.

 

She recalled not how she got outside, but suddenly, she was descending down a steep mountain. It was terrifying. With the strong gale whipping around her, she had to clutch onto her clothes just to keep them in place. Sansa kept close to the mountainside, but it didn’t diminish her fear. There were other people with her, but they were all a blur to Sansa. No face was recognizable, no voice familiar to her. The wind caught on her scarf, and Sansa almost lost it. Tucking it into her coat, she continued down the mountain with resolve in each step. The world swayed wide and empty beneath her feet, and her stomach churned with illness at the sight, but she kept going until they reached the bottom.

 

The scenery changed suddenly once more at the bottom. When she stepped off the mountainside, it was as if she had blinked her eyes and opened them to find herself standing in the middle of a snowy forest. The trees were bare, no leaves upon their naked grey branches, but she was not alone. Sansa turned quickly, her cloak swirling about her body as she moved, and then she was facing a hooded and cloaked figure much larger than her. A black horse, bigger than anything she had ever seen, dipped its head low and stared at her with glimmering eyes. It drew in a deep breath and snorted at her, and its eyes did not feel very friendly.

 

“Where are we?” she asked, not knowing what else to ask. She was so confused. One moment, she was on a mountain, and the next, she was on the ground in a forest with a stranger and a horse . . .

 

“We’re still in the Vale,” rasped a familiar voice, and Sansa started at the sound of it. That was no stranger. He was hunched over, sorting through something on the ground. Sansa took a step forward, and then another. A twig snapped, and he looked up. Sansa felt her mouth fall open as she drew in an abrupt breath of shock.

 

He stared at her, narrowing his eyes beneath his cowl. He looked different here somehow, but she recognized him all the same. His face was ruined more in the dream than in real life, so much it was almost hideous to look at, and it distorted his features, but she _knew_ that face. She knew it anywhere, and she knew his voice as well. Sansa took another cautious step towards him, and he straightened his back, so now he was taller than her.

 

Sansa looked up at him, her mouth still open, and she took one more slow step towards him. Sandor’s face drew deeper with wrinkles, confusion flitting across his expression. One more step, and she was almost touching him.

 

He looked uncomfortable, but he didn’t move. Sandor held his ground. His eyes were sharp and piercing, and Sansa reached out her hand to touch his face and make sure he was real. The tips of her fingers grazed cheek and nose and lip, and Sandor just stared at her like she was a ghost before him. For some reason, Sansa remembered a kiss. A cruel kiss between them, but she wanted a softer one. With care, she leaned towards him and stood on her toes. She thought she might have to pull him to her, but he didn’t try to resist her advance.

 

Sansa closed her eyes and kissed him softly on the lips, and this time they were surrounded by a world engulfed in snow instead of flames.

 

Sansa’s eyes slowly opened as she felt his lips disappear from hers, but the world was different again. It was warm instead of cold, and she was lying down on her side in a bed with covers pulled up to her chest. It wasn’t a castle anymore either. It was just a bedroom. Sansa blinked her eyes and looked ahead.

 

Sandor was staring back at her, his head half buried in the pillow. His scarred side was upright, and Sansa was reminded immediately of the dream.

 

“Dreaming?” he asked her, quirking his eyebrow.

 

Sansa thought of the dream, remembering the snow, and turned around in bed to look at Sandor’s window. Outside, it was snowing. The wind blew fiercely as well, and she was reminded of the mountainside. Turning back around to face Sandor, she settled against the bed. Sansa felt light-headed. How did her mind conjure reality so well to the fantasy inside her mind? She smiled somewhat, and shook her head.

 

“Yes,” she answered him softly, “I was dreaming.”

 

Sandor had a funny look on his face, though, and he gazed over her shoulder at the window she had just been looking at a moment ago. “Checking to see if the world is still there?”

 

Sansa ignored Sandor’s question with a smile. “Did you kiss me?” she asked him instead, favoring her own question above his.

 

“No,” Sandor said, “you kissed me. It was strange. You were fast asleep, and you just reached out and kissed me.”

 

Sansa felt her mouth open in surprise. “Did I really?”

 

Sandor grinned at her, a rare sight on his face. “No,” he told her. “I kissed you,” he admitted next. “I thought it might wake you up.”

 

Sansa grinned back, the corners of her eyes wrinkling with amusement. “Well, now I’m awake,” she stated, and she snuggled close to him again. His body was warm underneath the sheets. “How long were we out?”

 

Sandor’s eyes flitted over to the clock in his bedroom. “Two hours,” he said. He looked down at her again. He was lying on his side next to her, but he wasn’t lying on his injured side, which meant he couldn’t put an arm around her. Sansa didn’t mind. He was close enough that she didn’t need his arm to get any closer.

 

Sandor surprised her by leaning forward and kissing her. Sansa stilled and then she relaxed, and she let him capture her with his lips as soft as snow, but they weren’t cold, they were warm, and Sansa deepened the kiss. She made a small pleasurable sound at the base of her throat and rolled her body against him. Sandor responded immediately, and Sansa gasped on his lips as she felt him harden through his boxers. She hooked her leg around his hip as he kissed her with more passion, and Sansa’s hand reached between their bodies to the elastic band of his boxers. She grasped the band and lifted it, sliding her hand beneath it and wrapping her fingers around his manhood. He was so hot to the touch. His skin felt like it was burning. Sansa begin to stroke him as they kissed, and he groaned against her mouth, but he couldn’t grab her with his hand and pull her closer.

 

Sandor pulled away from her mouth, taking in a shallow breath. “Get on top of me,” he said against her lips, “and take off your panties.”

 

She swallowed past a sudden lump in her throat, her hand stilling its movement inside of his boxers, though she didn’t take it away from him. “And do what?” Sansa whispered in reply, purposefully trailing her thumb over the head of his manhood.

 

To her surprise and a slight skip in her heartbeat, Sandor growled low at her.

 

“I can’t touch you like this,” he said, his voice deeper than usual and grating as well, and Sansa wanted to obey it. She took her hand off of him and out of his boxers. She lay down on her back and contemplated her actions, but Sansa hooked her fingers into her panties on either side and lifted her bottom from the bed to pull them down. She kicked them off under the covers. Her leggings reached up to her lower thighs, and she thought about taking those off, too, but Sandor didn’t say anything about those. After a moment’s consideration, she left them on.

 

When she looked over at him, Sandor had already laid himself upon his back. She felt naked, even with a shirt, bra, and thigh high leggings still on. There was nothing between her legs, and she felt naked. It took courage for her to slowly place herself above him, and she chose to straddle his thighs. Sansa was too far away for him to touch, but she wanted to get comfortable with this first. Sandor didn’t immediately say anything, and it was probably because Sansa curled her fingers underneath his waistband on either side of his boxers and pulled them down until he was exposed to her.

 

If she was going to be so naked, it was only fair that he was, too. Sansa curled her fingers around the base of his manhood next, his skin still hot to the touch, and stroked them up and down his length at a languorous pace of her own choosing. Sandor watched her through heavy-lidded eyes, which made her face burn with excitement and a small bit of embarrassment, but she bit onto her bottom lip and kept her pace slow and steady along him.

 

“Come closer,” Sandor rasped low, and Sansa thought straight away that would place her—no, they couldn’t do that. Her hand had stilled, her face feeling hotter. “Please,” he added, softer this time. Sansa let out a shaky breath as she gently let go of him. _That wasn’t what he meant_ , she told herself. She knew that.

 

Sansa lifted herself and scooted upward along his body, narrowly avoiding that one part of his anatomy. The air around them was heavy and hard to breathe, electric and crackling at the same time, and her skin was burning up. Sansa was careful not to settle herself onto him, remaining propped up somewhat on her legs and knees. Sandor reached out for her, running his hand over the bare skin of her tummy and smoothing it over her hip and then higher up underneath her shirt. It felt so good, so Sansa leaned back to accept his touch. However, doing this added more weight onto her legs and lowered her body closer to his. Sansa felt her bottom brush against his manhood. She jumped all of a sudden, sitting up straight again. Sansa looked over her shoulder, even though she couldn’t see anything from there.

 

Sandor seemed amused by her reaction. “Is everything all right?” he asked her, though he somehow managed to not break the sultry tone of his voice. His hand was under her shirt, having stilled against her side, his thumb caressing her skin in a circle.

 

Sansa looked forward again, and her expression must have concerned him. His amusement faded from his face. Sansa opened her mouth. She took in a breath of air before she spoke.

 

“I don’t want to have sex,” she told him, looking him straight in the eyes.

 

Sandor furrowed his brow, shaking his head slightly upon the pillow. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” he said, a reassurance he had said many times before. “Besides,” Sandor added, lowering his voice to a murmur, “I wasn’t thinking of that.”

 

What little tension there was in her shoulders relaxed, and Sansa tilted her head as she gazed down at him. “What were you thinking of?”

 

Sandor lowered his hand from her side to her hip, and then down to her thigh. His fingers caressed the edge of her left legging, just barely grazing her thigh. It sent a pleasant shock through her nerves, and then his hand drifted higher up her thigh. Gently, he grazed the tips of his fingers against her skin. Sansa made a tiny noise in response, and his hand drifted lower. He guided it between her legs, and Sansa opened her mouth and moaned aloud, her eyelids drifting shut, when his fingers slid against her intimately. His thumb pressed down, encircling the sensitive spot near the front.

 

Almost as if in instinct, her body began to move ever so slightly against his hand. He knew just where to touch her, just how to stroke, to alight every sensation of pleasure in her body. Sansa felt him dip his fingers a little deeper, and then he swirled his fingers over her, spreading her wetness and making her slick, and her whole body quaked in response. She leaned her body back again, opening her legs a little further, wanting to give him better access to touch her. Sansa tipped her head back, moaning at the ceiling, and Sandor focused on that little sensitive spot at the front that made her muscles shake and erratic sounds to pour from her throat. Her bottom pressed down on his erection as she leaned back, but this time she didn’t care. Sandor groaned aloud, though, his hand halting for just a moment against her.

 

“Take off your shirt,” he ordered. Briefly, in the haze of her mind, it sounded like an order to her. It was the way he spoke it like a demand in the deep growl of his voice. There was a throb between her legs, and she grasped the hem of her shirt, pulling it over her head. Sansa discarded it on the bed. She knew he probably wanted her bra off, too, so Sansa unhooked it and slid it off as well. It joined her shirt on the bed.

 

With her chest suddenly bare and the heavy gaze of Sandor’s eyes upon it, Sansa felt soft tingles on the tips of her nipples as they hardened. It tickled, but Sansa liked it. Sandor abandoned the soft area between her legs to cup her breast in his hand, rolling his thumb over her nipple and gently teasing it. His hand left her breast, but slid fully against her chest and down to her stomach.

 

“Lay back,” he told her next, and Sansa followed his instruction again. This time, she pressed her hands to the bed to prop her body up as she leaned back. She might have been embarrassed before his assurances, but he liked looking at her body. If he didn’t like it, he wouldn’t want to look at it so badly.

 

Sandor ran his hand up her body from her stomach towards her chest as far as he could reach, smoothing his palm over her skin. He brought his hand back down with a slow motion across her tummy, and she heard a deep hum of pleasure in the back of his throat.

 

“Touch me,” Sansa breathed out, not wanting to wait.

 

Two of his fingers eased inside of her, and Sansa moaned aloud, hands grasping the sheets for purchase, as he began to pump them back and forth. It was bliss for her every time he was inside of her like this. Sansa liked it when he touched her intimately between her legs, gliding his fingers against her, but she liked it even more when Sandor slid his fingers inside of her. She felt him thrust them slowly in and out, taking his time with her. Sandor liked to wind her up at first. He liked to give her a moment until she silently asked for more, and so Sandor was slow with her at first. Sansa rocked her hips in tune with his hand, but when her pace unconsciously quickened, so did the pace of his hand. Her pace quickened only a little, but his went much further than just a little.

 

Sansa stilled her body at the sudden change of pace and gripped the sheets so hard between her fists her knuckled turned white. Every sound torn from her throat was pure ecstasy, and she felt his gaze on her body, which only intensified the pleasurable shocks. When Sandor hooked his fingers upward as he continued to move them inside of her, he pressed on that sweet spot that elicited uncontrollable shakes and pulses of pleasure from within her body. Sansa loosened her hands completely upon the sheets, closing her eyes as she allowed him to take her to her peak. She was louder than normal, louder than either of the times before, practically hollering towards the ceiling as her muscles throbbed and pulsed with heightened sensations of bliss multiple times in a row until her entire body was quaking from her orgasms. Each one he brought her one after another until she was shaking so bad and her arms could barely hold her up anymore.

 

She gave herself some time with her arms only just barely holding her up, trying to regain her breath and control of her muscles again. With shaky arms and legs, Sansa righted herself atop him and crawled off as modestly as possible to lie down on the bed beside Sandor. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she mildly registered she was still wearing her leggings, but it didn’t embarrass her. There was something oddly exciting about it, and she felt another pulse of pleasure throb between her legs. In the aftershocks of her orgasms, her body kept giving her little pulses spaced further out than before. Sansa liked it, though. It told her it had been a good one. She knew her body would take a while to come down from its high, but her hand wandered down Sandor’s body to take him into her hand again.

 

Sansa stroked him slowly at first, taking her time as she moved her hand up and down. Somewhere above her head, she heard a deep groan from Sandor. When Sansa tilted her head up to look at him, he turned his head to face her. With her hand working itself along his length, Sandor leaned towards Sansa and caught her lips in a heavy kiss. It wasn’t soft, and it wasn’t particularly gentle, but she liked it all the same. He deepened the kiss when her hand gripped him harder, and Sansa heard the growl in the back of his throat. She began to move her hand quicker along him, and Sandor thrust into her hand. Her thumb encircled the tip, rubbing him as she continued to stroke closer to the edge, and he bit her bottom lip between his teeth. It hurt, and so when he let go, Sansa caught his bottom lip between her teeth and bit down harder than he had on her.

 

Sandor lost control in that moment. With a loose moan, he suddenly stilled as a hot and sticky substance spilled onto Sansa’s hand. She stroked him until he was finished and his breathing had slowed down again, and then she gently removed her hand from him. The air was hot and stuffy despite the cold temperatures outside. In here they couldn’t feel them. The heater must have been running hot in the background. It was the only explanation. Her hair stuck to her neck and the sides of her face with beads of sweat. Sansa wiped her hand on the sheets before she pulled her hair out of the way, and then she laid her head comfortably against the pillow.

 

She gazed up at Sandor. His eyes were closed, and he looked so peaceful.

 

“I may have to stay over,” Sansa whispered to him, “what with the storm outside.”

 

“Good,” Sandor murmured. His eyes remained closed, and he didn’t turn over to look at her. “Stay.”

 

Sansa felt a smile creep onto her lips, and she wrapped her arm around Sandor’s middle as she closed her eyes and pressed her lips lightly against his shoulder. A soft sigh filled her lungs, and Sansa nuzzled her nose against his shoulder.

 

Outside, the storm whipped around the building and howled against the metal fire escape.

 

Inside, it didn’t touch a thing.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 73\. A Dark Road that Leads to My House – “Dark Road” by Annie Lennox  
> 74\. Poker Face – “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga  
> 75\. Lord Help Me if I Starve – “Taste” by Lorna Vallings  
> 76\. Crawling Out of the Mess You’ve Made – “Demons” by Imagine Dragons  
> 77\. Give My Gun Away When It’s Loaded – “9 Crimes” by Damien Rice  
> 78\. Down Corridors through Automatic Doors – “Wires” by Athlete  
> 79\. All Your Bullets Ricochet – “Titanium” by David Guetta (feat. Sia)  
> 80\. Warm Like Snow – “Snow” by Fake?  
> 81\. A Gambler Pays His Dues – “World Ain’t Right” by Hurt  
> 82\. Watch My Silhouette – “Supernatural (Deconstructed Mix)” by Kesha


	83. Be Careful Making Wishes in the Dark

_* * *_

 

Despite his recent efforts of trying to avoid Renly, Sandor found himself sitting in the man’s office yet again under a dark wash of vibrant blue and violet light. The room was lit solely through the black lights that hung on the walls above Renly’s expensive paintings, save for a single lamp on Renly’s desk with a gold base and green enameled glass shade. The bulb beneath the green shade glowed with a soft yellow color, which spilled onto the desk with a warm hue, but the green enameled glass sent shards of colorful light upward. Renly was nothing if not a colorful man. Everything in his office echoed of his love of color, even the damn lamp.

 

Usually, Renly was very talkative. As of the moment, Renly sat behind his desk in utter silence with his elbows on the surface and his hands steepled before him. He wore a grave look on his characteristically exuberant face, and Sandor saw the man’s jaw flex with tightened muscles as his eyes flitted back and forth over his desk. The expression in Renly’s eyes reflected both his fears and his disbelief at the news Sandor had just delivered to him. Renly was processing all of the information as carefully as time could allow for, but there wasn’t much of that left if their suspicions had any grounds in truth.

 

After a long stretch of silence that seemed to go on forever, Renly finally lowered his palms to the desk and leaned back in his chair. He seemed to be gripping the desk with his fingers, which were white-tipped with pressure. Renly tilted his chin upward, cutting his eyes at Sandor. The soft yellow light of the lamp created a glow beneath Renly’s chin, and his eyes appeared darker in the shadows above the glow. They glimmered with the sharpness of broken glass, reflecting all of his thoughts without Renly having to say a single word.

 

“Any chance she’s just hysterical?” Renly asked Sandor with a calmness reserved for asking about the weather or what they were having for lunch. Renly’s right hand lifted from the table, moving upward with a flourish of his wrist. “Losing her mind over the stress of the situation with Ramsay?”

 

“Ramsay wasn’t working alone,” Sandor reminded him. “You were there, Renly. You saw the cars. Ramsay always worked alone in the past. If this was just some abduction for sick fun, he wouldn’t have had visitors. Visitors with guns. He did what he did on orders. I know the look of it. You know the look of it.”

 

Renly took in a deep breath, looking away from Sandor. His mouth drew into a thin line. “Yes, I know the look of it,” he confessed, drumming his fingers against the desk’s smooth surface.

 

“Then, you’ve got to admit it,” Sandor pushed further, his voice harsher. If he had to be unrelenting about this to get the point across to Renly, then so be it. “Tywin is behind this.”

 

Renly sighed with an exasperated blink of his eyes, his neck appearing to roll just slightly with the motion. He turned his head back towards Sandor to face him across the desk. “That’s a push,” Renly said.

 

“It’s not a push,” Sandor answered darkly, narrowing his eyes.

 

“It’s a push,” Renly repeated, and he righted his chair so that it faced the desk all the way. He gestured with his hand towards Sandor. “Why would Tywin send a serial killer out of his way to kidnap the wrong girl in an attempt to kidnap the _right_ girl in order to threaten her life to get you to do—what? Turn me in? Reveal disparaging evidence against me? Murder me in my sleep? What’s the endgame, Sandor, when there are much cleaner ways to go about this? Tywin is a longtime player of this game, and he wouldn’t do something as sloppy as this.”

 

For a few seconds, Sandor found himself at a loss for words. Renly was right. He had a point about one thing. It was sloppy. Tywin was known for his neatness and his ability to execute a plan without failure. As suspicious as it was, it didn’t seem to have Tywin’s signature written all over it.

 

“I don’t know,” Sandor told him, furrowing his brow as he shook his head. His gaze had fallen downward, but he lifted it back to Renly. He doubted himself for the first time since his suspicions had settled onto Tywin. “Arya isn’t lying about this, though. She knows what she heard.”

 

“Have you considered, Sandor,” Renly drawled out on purpose, and he leaned forward onto his desk as he peered over the edge, “that maybe Arya heard what they wanted her to hear?”

 

Sandor stared at Renly in silence. It hadn’t crossed his mind that someone would be as elaborate as that with a kidnapping plan, but it also didn’t make any sense given what they knew so far. “All that Arya heard,” Sandor explained a second time, “was the boss wanted Sansa to use me to get to you. Which part is the lie?”

 

Renly sat back in his chair. He picked up a pen, twirling it between his fingers. “Maybe they wanted Sansa,” he offered, “but it’s too far out of the way to use her to get to me. There are much more direct methods if I’m their endgame. I have a feeling if someone wants Sansa, then all they want is you.”

 

Sandor felt like his chest was getting tighter, becoming more constricted beneath his clothes. “I don’t have enemies like that,” he said in a low voice.

 

“You _think_ you don’t have enemies like that,” Renly corrected him, pointing his pen towards Sandor across the desk, “but we all have enemies that we don’t see. I even have a few like that, Sandor, though I tend to get to the bottom of their secrets. The point is there are a lot of people smart enough to not let their hate be known in a public manner. They keep it hidden, culture it in dark laboratories, and wait for the precise moment to get close enough to you to take you down with their well thought out plans and schemes.” Renly fixed his idle gaze onto Sandor, twisting his pen in midair as it still pointed at him. “Somebody wants you, Sandor, and it’s not Tywin Lannister.”

 

Sandor felt his jaw tighten against Renly’s words. “Bullshit,” he said simply.

 

Renly dropped his pen onto his desk. It clattered as it fell to the polished wooden surface. “Believe it or don’t believe it, Sandor, but they aren’t after me.”

 

“And why not?” Sandor sneered, hearing the tone of his voice change suddenly. “This is _your_ fucking mess—”

 

“Maybe it’s not about the mess,” Renly offered, sounding a little kinder this time. “Maybe it’s more personal than you think, and it goes back much further than recent events would lead you to believe.”

 

“Why Sansa?” Sandor blurted out all of a sudden. He couldn’t guard his tongue anymore. His anger was a visceral thing beneath the surface, wriggling inside his chest with the burning heat of a hot poker, very much alive and real and searing its way through his insides. “Why not just come after me, huh? Why her?”

 

At Sandor’s barrage of questions, Renly bent his head forward. There was a quiet exhalation from his lungs before he lifted his eyes to look at Sandor. “Even I can’t ignore it, Sandor. Ever since you met that girl, you’ve been different. You’re not the same person you used to be. She’s changed you. She’s had an effect on you. I would go so far as to say you’re in love with her, and you’ve never been in love with anyone before. I’ve known you long enough to know that about you. Loras sees it, too. I’m not the only one.” Renly shook his head, falling quiet for a brief moment, but Sandor didn’t interrupt him. Sandor’s hands squeezed the armrests, turning his knuckles ghost white with the force of his grip upon it. “Imagine the pain you could cause someone you hate,” Renly said softly, “ripping apart, piece by piece, the thing they love most in the world.”

 

Sandor swallowed past a lump building up in his throat. The pit in his stomach was empty and wide, and the cold chill inside of his chest was real. It wasn’t his injury, though one of Sandor’s hands lifted from the armrest to lay itself over the outside of his shirt right above his bandaged wound. He felt it throb suddenly with a dull ache. “Let me guess,” Sandor said. “You’ve done this before?”

 

Raising his hand into the air, Renly closed his fingers inward against his palm to make a tight fist. It was an excessive interpretation, but that was one of Renly’s flaws. Excessiveness. “You take it in your hand,” Renly explained to Sandor with a measured carefulness, “and you pluck it apart until it’s a broken shell of what it used to be, and then, if you want to cause some real damage, you kill it. A broken bird can repair its wings, and maybe one day it’ll fly again and maybe it won’t, but if you kill it, it can’t heal. Then, you’re left with the guilt of it being your fault. You caused it all that pain because you loved it, and now it’s gone. You can’t fix it. You can’t repair it. You can’t heal it. It’s dead, and her last moments will be filled with thoughts of why didn’t you come to save her.” Renly’s hand fell back down to his desk, though when it rested at last, it touched it without a sound. “Someone else knows what she means to you. Someone who wants you to suffer. They don’t want me, Sandor. I can promise you that. They want you, and they’ll use her to get to you and break you.”

 

Sandor stood abruptly from the chair. It made him light-headed, but he steadied his feet against the solid floor beneath his feet. Sandor raised his hand, closing all but one finger against his palm and pointing the final one at Renly. “Bullshit,” he hissed. “No one’s after me. They want _you_ —”

 

“I can talk to Loras,” Renly said in a soft voice. “Put a detail on Sansa for you to watch her twenty-four seven—”

 

“They’re after _you_!” Sandor roared at him, and his chest throbbed with a sharper pain from hollering. It caused him to nearly double-over as he gripped hard right above the spot on his chest where the knife had struck his lung. Sandor’s head swam with frenzied thoughts. The physical ache from his wound brought him a blinding pain, and both things clouded up his mind with panic. It was too hard to think.

 

When the pain subsided from his chest, he realized he had grabbed onto the edge of Renly’s desk with his free hand to steady himself. Slowly, Sandor raised his head to look up. Renly stood on the other side of the desk, looking for once in his life genuinely concerned about the condition of the man standing before him. It took Sandor a moment to realize that man was him, and it caused a heavy scowl to settle itself upon his features.

 

With care in his movements, Sandor pulled his hand away from Renly’s desk. He righted himself and lifted his chin, glaring at Renly. “They’re after you,” Sandor repeated with a low voice. “This is your mess, not mine, and they don’t want me. Don’t put your enemies on my doorstep.”

 

“Sandor—” Renly began, but Sandor wouldn’t let him finish.

 

“Put the detail on Sansa,” Sandor said, looking Renly in the eyes. “I can’t protect her by myself like this.”

 

“I’ll do that,” Renly said firmly, “but Sandor, I mean it. I’m not trying to rile you up. I’m trying to get you to see the bigger picture—”

 

Sandor let out a low and raspy chuckle. “The bigger picture?” he asked, his tone mocking. “The bigger picture of coming after a nobody serving dog like me?”

 

“It’s not like that—”

 

“You just said it was like that,” Sandor stated, cutting him off. “Spare me your flowery stories, Renly. I’m tired of hearing them.”

 

“You won’t be tired of hearing them when they come true,” Renly warned.

 

Sandor slowly turned his head to look at Renly. “They won’t be coming true.”

 

Renly stared back at Sandor, biting the insides of his cheeks as his gaze took on a sharper fix on Sandor’s face, but he didn’t say anything else. With his silence as the only answer Sandor needed to hear, Sandor turned away from Renly at last and walked over to the door of Renly’s office. He grasped the door handle in his fist and twisted it, pulling open the door and exiting the room. In the hallway there was a bright light above his head, sending down a glaring white light into the darkened area. Sandor pulled the door shut behind himself, noting the lack of guards around Renly’s door this time, and headed off towards the staircase.

 

It was early evening, so the club was empty, even though the sky was already dark outside. Most people weren’t off of work just yet. There were a few workers scuttling about like cockroaches, preparing the place for a party tonight. They strung up silver, green, and golden tinsel for the holidays. Sandor descended carefully down the steps of the stairwell, his hand gliding over the railing as his eyes roved over the place below his feet. It felt like descending into hell from the seat of the devil as he made his way down to the main floor of the club. Despite Renly’s crisp laughs, big smiles, and bright eyes, a part of Sandor felt he could no longer trust Renly after the threat made against Sansa, and that doubt poisoned any words from the man’s lips. He had come here to warn Renly, and the man had turned everything onto Sandor instead.

 

Once he reached the bottom step on the stairwell, Sandor headed straight for the exit to the club without bothering to look around anymore. He walked directly to his car, getting inside of it and cranking the engine immediately. It roared to life, and Sandor pulled out of the parking lot. He drove straight home from there in complete silence, not bothering to turn on the radio to drown out his thoughts. It wouldn’t have helped him any. The noise of music wouldn’t stop his brain from turning over everything he had heard out of Renly’s lips, imagining the scenarios in his head as they played out like a bad movie behind his eyes.

 

Sandor changed his course halfway to his house. Instead of going home, he took the familiar path towards Sansa’s house. He didn’t drive straight up to her home, though. Sandor parked his car down the street on a dark and empty curb, and he shut off the engine as he tucked his keys into his pocket. Gazing through the windshield at Sansa’s house, Sandor sat there in silence and kept a watch on it. He didn’t want to walk up to her door and alarm anybody. Every single nerve of his was shot to shit, and he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to do aside from watch her and make sure everything was all right.

 

What would he do if someone did come for her, though? How would he handle it? Sandor didn’t have a gun or any kind of weapon on him but the baseball bat in his car, and yet there was no way he was going to be able to use that properly in his condition. He was useless like this. Sandor didn’t have the strength to fight anyone off, so all he could do was watch in vain until Renly called in that detail for Sansa. How long did it take to arrange a detail? Sandor lifted up his wrist and gazed at his watch, taking note of the time. Letting out a deep sigh, he lowered his hand and reached for the phone in his pocket. Sandor pulled it out, opened it, and scrolled through the numbers. He settled on one and called it. It rang only once before someone answered it.

 

“Loras,” the voice said on the other end.

 

“Hey, Loras,” Sandor told him, finding Loras’s voice more of a comfort than he expected it to be.

 

“Hey,” Loras said happily this time. “Sorry, I didn’t look at the number on my phone. Just answered it. I’m on duty right now. What’s up?”

 

“Did Renly call in a detail for Sansa?” Sandor asked him.

 

Loras was quiet. “You know, Sandor, Renly doesn’t do everything through me. He has other hands all over the place. He probably called somebody else. Have you asked him? Why is he calling in a detail for Sansa, anyway?”

 

Sandor realized Loras didn’t know the story yet. Sandor hadn’t talked to Loras about it. He had gone straight to Renly. “It’s a long story,” Sandor said. He didn’t want to talk about it if Loras was on duty right now. “I’ll explain it to you later. He said he would call in a detail for her, though. To watch the house, keep an eye on her while I can’t.”

 

“Is this about Arya?” Loras asked, though he sounded confused.

 

“Yes, it’s about Arya, but it’s not. It’s about Sansa now,” Sandor told him. There was no point in waiting. Loras was going to get it out of him sooner or later, and Loras didn’t like to wait for information. “Arya said she was taken by accident. She said she heard a man say Sansa was the target, not her. Renly said he would put a detail on Sansa’s house to watch her—”

 

“Wait,” Loras said, cutting him off. “Sansa was the target? Why? Why Sansa?”

 

“I don’t know anymore,” Sandor growled at him through the receiver. He was tired of explaining things already. Sandor raised his hand to rub it over his face, closing his eyes in the process. He dropped his hand to his lap, opening his eyes and staring blankly through the windshield. “I don’t know. I thought it was to get to me to get to Renly, but Renly thinks it’s just to get to me.”

 

“And who is supposed to be behind this?” Loras inquired further. He sounded like a detective sorting through the evidence, and his interest in the answer was palpable.

 

“Tywin, if you ask me,” Sandor said, sounding tired. “If you ask your boyfriend, it could be anyone.”

 

“This definitely complicates things,” Loras added, and Sandor heard him sigh on his end of the phone. “I’ll check into it for you, though. What’s one more thing, eh?”

 

Sandor closed his eyes with Loras’s answer, feeling the constriction in his chest grow instead of subside. It should have been doing the opposite, but it felt harder to breathe. Sandor brought his hand to his chest, pressing onto the good half of it as if it might help him to breathe better, but it didn’t seem to do anything for him at all.

 

“Okay,” Sandor answered simply, not knowing what else to say.

 

“Take it easy, Sandor,” Loras said to him. “You’re still hurt, big guy. Don’t stress yourself out while you’re still trying to heal. Go home, and get some rest. You don’t sound too good, and I know you’re not home right now. I know you too well to know you’d be home with something like this on your mind, so take my advice and head back. Drink a cup of hot tea and lie down.” There was silence on Loras’s end of the phone for a moment. “Are you sitting outside Sansa’s house?”

 

Sandor didn’t answer Loras immediately. He didn’t want to admit something like that, but it was the truth. His vehicle was parked on the curb of Winterfell Avenue, and he was staring down the road at Sansa’s house. There was a whole pile of cars outside still just like there was the evening he came over for dinner once he was released from the hospital. Sansa had her whole family awake and with her.

 

Surely, she didn’t need him sitting out here on the curb like some stalker.

 

“I’ll take your silence as a yes,” Loras said, though he didn’t sound amused by it like he normally would have been at Sandor’s expense. “Go home, Sandor. Sansa will be fine tonight. I’ll do a patrol by her house with Brienne, okay?”

 

Sandor continued staring at Sansa’s house, wondering if he should go home at a time like this. He should, given his lung. Without his car running and the heater off, the cold from outside was creeping into the vehicle. Maybe that was making it harder for him to breathe. He took the time to consider Loras’s advice. Even though Loras couldn’t see it through the phone, Sandor nodded his head.

 

“Okay,” he finally rasped, and he coughed afterwards.

 

“Go home, Sandor,” Loras advised once more with a kindly voice. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”

 

Sandor didn’t say anything else. He hung up the call and put his phone back into his pocket. He stared at her home for a little while longer, and then he fished out his keys and cranked his car. Sandor pulled away from the curb and headed for his apartment. On the way there, he made a pit stop to pick up something. As the heater ran and filled his car with warmth again, the pain in his chest subsided, and it became easier to breathe again.

 

Once he made it back to his apartment, Sandor kicked the door shut and threw his keys onto the kitchen counter. He put the paper bag on the counter, a heavy clunk echoing at the glass bottle from within it. Sandor grabbed a cup from the cupboard, pulled the bottle out of the bag, and unscrewed the lid. He filled the glass halfway, and then he walked over to the freezer with the glass in his hand to place some ice cubes inside of it. Swirling the ice with the liquid, Sandor lifted the cup to his lips and downed a gulp of the bitter liquid. It burned his throat on the way down, but the burn was a smooth comfort for him as it had been in the past. He closed his eyes, savoring the taste, and lifted the glass for another gulp. Never had he found anything more comforting than alcohol, except one thing.

 

 _Sansa_ , he thought, opening his eyes to the emptiness of his apartment.

 

 _So, please_ , Sansa had said softly to him once, _don’t drink anymore because of me_.

 

He stood there unmoving, frozen by the memory, wondering which way was up and which way was down. Down was supposed to be below his feet, but Sandor felt like he was already there, staring upward at a world he couldn’t reach. Every time he had tried to turn his life around, he had always failed by falling back two steps for every step forward that he took. One mistake, and Sandor always found himself back at square one. He had done so much. He had changed so much, and then he had done that one last job for Renly, and now everything he had built was crumbling down around his feet again. Sansa was in danger. He might have even been in danger, but Sandor couldn’t bring himself to care about his life. The only one he cared about was Sansa’s, and he had listened to Loras. He had gone home when he should have been waiting outside on her curb all night to make sure she was safe until morning, and then he should wait all day again to make sure she was safe until nightfall, and then—

 

Sandor threw the glass with a force he didn’t know he had in himself. It hit the wall above the kitchen counter near the sink, shattering into a million pieces of glimmering broken shards. The ice inside of cup scattered, some of it falling upon the counter, some of it rolling into the ink, and other pieces bouncing down onto the tiles of the kitchen floor. Three pieces rolled right up to his boots, and he stared down at them, unseeing.

 

He stared at them blankly, and then he blinked. It did nothing to help with the muddled state of his mind. Turning away from the mess he had made without bothering to clean it up, Sandor grasped the bottle of liquor in one hand as he headed for the hallway in his apartment. He stepped into his bedroom through the open door, shutting it behind himself.

 

It closed with a click, and there was nothing left but the sound of silence to fill his empty apartment.

 

 


	84. The Odds Gonna Stack Up

_* * *_

 

Brienne waved goodbye at Tyrion and Dany as the two of them departed from the house. She watched as they made their way back to the car with a grin on her face. Tyrion hollered out his farewell, simply lifting his hand in goodbye without waving it, while Dany waved like a beauty queen with her perfectly poised arm and cupped hand raised in the air. “Good day!” Dany called out to Brienne in her thick accent, and she brought her hand to her mouth to kiss her fingers and blow the kiss in Brienne’s direction. Brienne pretended to catch it, knowing it would put a brilliant smile on Dany’s face, which it did.

 

As their chauffeur started the engine on the black BMW, Brienne gazed on with a soft sigh upon her lips as they pulled out of the driveway. She gave them one last farewell wave and smile, and then she turned around and headed back inside the house. Brienne had only just gotten home from work, and it was obvious that Jaime had invited his brother and sister-in-law over for some company instead of staying home all day by himself. Truth be told, Brienne was proud of him. It was a step in the right direction, even if he hadn’t gotten around to shaving off that godforsaken beard from his face. Jaime had let his hair grow out again, too, and his hair grew fast. At least with his hair, Jaime kept it well-groomed.

 

Jaime was inside the kitchen right now, cleaning up the plates and silverware from the meal he had just shared with Tyrion and Dany. The sink was full almost to the top with soap bubbles, and Jaime stood in front of it with his shirt sleeves rolled all the way up. His arms were plunged deep in the water, hands scrubbing away at dishes and forks and knives. Brienne leaned against the wall, crossing her arms, and watched him in silence as he cleaned and hummed to himself.

 

“You’re in a good mood,” Brienne told him at last, wondering what in the world brought about this change in Jaime. It could have been Tyrion’s doing. Tyrion always had a way of making Jaime laugh when Jaime didn’t want to laugh.

 

“Yes,” Jaime agreed, “for the moment.”

 

“So,” Brienne said, pushing herself away from the wall with her shoulder, “did you find out anything last night?”

 

Jaime paused in the middle of scouring a large plate, but then he picked it up again as if he hadn’t stopped in the first place. “I did,” he said with a cryptic air to the admission. “I found out something very interesting,” Jaime went on to say, and that got Brienne’s attention.

 

She leaned backward against the counter across from him, crossed her legs at the ankle, and folded her arms over her chest. “Go on,” Brienne urged him, nodding her head forward in encouragement for him to continue. She couldn’t stop the curiosity she felt at wanting to know what he had discovered last night. It was only the beginning of their private investigation off the books, and to be honest, Brienne hadn’t expected Jaime to find out anything on his first night. Maybe she should given him more credit, though.

 

Jaime pulled his hands out of the soapy water, and shook them off. He grabbed a dish towel, drying off his hands the rest of the way before putting it back on the rack. He turned to face Brienne, and then he leaned sideways against the counter. Jaime folded his arms across his chest, raising his chin.

 

“Sandor went to visit Maegor’s Holdfast yesterday,” Jaime revealed to Brienne, “during the day before official business hours.”

 

Brienne furrowed her brow in confusion. “Maegor’s Holdfast?”

 

Jaime closed his eyes briefly, nodding his head in confirmation. “Yes,” he said, “Maegor’s Holdfast. Renly’s nightclub. He was there for approximately thirty to forty-five minutes. He came out looking more frustrated than when he went in.”

 

“Why would Sandor be going to Maegor’s Holdfast outside of official business hours?” Brienne inquired out loud, picking apart the information. She found herself shaking her head as she ran through all of the possible options, but none of them were valid reasons for Sandor to be there. “He doesn’t work there, and I didn’t even know he knew Renly Baratheon personally.”

 

“It gets better,” Jaime said.

 

Brienne looked up from the floor. “It gets better, or it gets worse?” she asked.

 

Jaime quirked a broken smile at her as he drew in a deep breath and exhaled it. “Depends on your definition of ‘better’ and ‘worse,’” he countered. “Anyway, I kept following him. He was headed home, but then he cut around and drove like a madman towards Winterfell Avenue. Sandor parked on the curb and watched the Stark residence through his windshield for about an hour.”

 

Brienne didn’t like what she was hearing out of Jaime’s mouth. All of it left her feeling conflicted on the inside. She wanted to believe in Sandor. He had joined the camp to turn his life around for the better. She had made friends with him. He had been battling his alcohol addiction, and he had shared his fight with her. She wanted to believe in him, but something wasn’t right. Brienne knew when to listen to her instincts, and her instincts were telling her something was definitely wrong. There were too many questions, too many loose ends. Why had Sandor been there at Ramsay’s house, and to what end? Why had Arya stabbed him as well as Ramsay?

 

Sandor had a record. Sandor had joined the camp, and he had become Arya’s camp counselor. There was no reason on this green earth that Brienne could put into her head to explain why Arya would stab Sandor except that Arya was now terrified of him. Brienne had heard the story a million times before. People who you never thought could be capable of such horrible things were often the quiet and kind neighbors just next door who kept to themselves, the teacher at the school, or the youth counselor at camp. They often got close to their victims to lessen the blow of suspicion upon them. People were suspicious of strangers, but not of friends.

 

It was for that reason that she didn’t want to believe it. Sandor had become her friend, but Brienne had to be honest with herself. She couldn’t just ignore her instincts or her suspicions. She couldn’t just brush it aside like it meant nothing at all. If Sandor’s purpose at Ramsay’s house had been a good one, why erase his name from the report? Why act as if he was never there? More than that, what was Loras’s purpose behind it? What did Loras have to gain by removing Sandor from the file? None of it added up to anything good, Brienne realized. None of it at all.

 

“He didn’t go inside?” Brienne asked. “Or knock on the door?”

 

“No,” Jaime said. “He just sat out there in car, staring at their house for an hour. He made a phone call, though, while he was sitting on the curb. I saw him reach for his phone and dial someone, but I don’t know who. He was on the phone for a few minutes. Maybe ten minutes after he hung up, he drove off. He picked up some liquor on the way home, and then he reached his apartment. I kept a watch for about an hour, but he never came down again. The lights were off inside of his apartment. My guess is he drank himself into a stupor and fell asleep.”

 

“So,” Brienne said out loud, piecing all of the information together, “he went to see Renly. Whatever they talked about upset Sandor, and so he went to go sit on the curb of Winterfell Avenue and watch Sansa and Arya’s house. He then called someone, and after he spoke with them, he drove away, bought liquor, and went home.”

 

“Correct,” Jaime concurred, nodding his head once.

 

“Why would talking to Renly send Sandor, agitated, straight to Sansa and Arya’s house?” Brienne asked Jaime, thinking that was the first important question they needed to answer.

 

“I think first we have to ask ourselves what Renly does for a living,” Jaime told her, though he paused before finishing his train of thought. “Outside of running a nightclub, which is the obvious.”

 

“His brothers, Robert and Stannis, are both into politics,” Brienne offered up. “It is possible Renly works with them behind the books?”

 

Jaime wrinkled his forehead together, and then he shook his head. “No,” he said, “it’s not likely. Renly can’t stand his brothers half the time. He thinks Robert is a drunken fool and Stannis is a stiff old codpiece. There is no way he would work for either of them.”

 

“Renly works on his own, then,” Brienne said with more assurance this time.

 

“Possible,” Jaime agreed for the moment, entertaining her thought, “but doing what?”

 

An idea hit Brienne just then, but even to her, it seemed unbelievable. However, she was learning to think not all things could be impossible anymore. Her mind barely wanted to entertain it because it was Renly of all people, but if her beliefs of Sandor could be shaken so badly, then maybe Renly wasn’t so far out of the ballpark either.

 

“Sandor,” Brienne said carefully, her eyes meeting Jaime’s across the distance, “used to work for a big name boss in town. A boss nobody could ever seem to find or get their hands on. No one even knew his name or where to find him, but now all of these things are happening, and Sandor is visiting Renly at strange hours. A man, who previously, we believed had no connection to Sandor.”

 

The steady and careless look on Jaime’s face slowly began to fade. His expression became blank at first as his lips parted, and he pushed himself off of the counter as he gazed wordlessly at Brienne. His eyes had gone wide and almost wild like a feral cat’s. Unfolding his arms, Jaime pointed one of his fingers at Brienne. “It’s possible,” he said, sounding eager at the idea she had proposed to him. “It’s very possible. I’ve never considered it before. I’ve never—”

 

“Jaime, calm down,” Brienne told him softly. “Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s an option. It’s not necessarily the truth. Don’t mistake the two.”

 

“No, you’re right,” Jaime agreed, grasping his forehead with one of his hands. He rubbed at his temples before dropping his hand. “We have to dig further than this. Find out more. If there’s something big here, Brienne—”

 

“We leave Loras out of it,” she instructed firmly.

 

Jaime looked up at her. “Loras?” he asked, puzzlement creasing his face. “Why leave Loras out of it?”

 

“Because,” she warned him, “Loras is the son of the new Prime Minister, Mace Tyrell. We’re not tackling fish bigger than our nets can catch.”

 

Jaime gazed away from her, though she could see he took her warning seriously. He nodded his head. “Of course,” Jaime told her. “Loras is obviously doing more than just seeing Renly. He probably works for him, but we have to be careful. You can follow Loras to get information on the people he deals with, but none of it can come back to Loras. We’ll leave him out of it.”

 

“I don’t even want to follow him,” Brienne shot back. “It’s a dangerous slope once we head down that way, and I don’t want to be caught up in a second time during my career as a police officer hiding evidence, Jaime. Once was enough.”

 

Jaime lowered his head at that, a look of shame blooming across his fair features. For a few seconds, Jaime looked like a child instead of grown man under the split rays of glowing sunlight that came in through the kitchen window behind his head. The sunlight offset his hair, giving it the incandesce of a halo from behind. He placed his hand upon the kitchen counter, and Brienne watched as he stared down at it. “Agreed,” he finally said, his voice lower than normal.

 

Brienne drew in a deep breath of relief at his acquiescence. “Good,” she told him.

 

“What do you think they are up to, though?” Jaime asked her, lifting his gaze to hers. He had his eyes narrowed together, and their quality was sharp, gleaming with a thousand questions beneath their shiny green surface. Brienne knew that look of his. It was a hungry look, bordering on greed but not quite. He felt alive again doing the work he was born to do, but there was something dangerous in it as well. Jaime meant to find something in this to use to his advantage in order to clear his name somehow. He meant to not be a nobody anymore ever since his name had been dragged through the mud, and he saw this as his great ticket out of it.

 

Jaime had been born a Lannister, and Brienne knew everything that entailed. He was proud. His family was proud, and he had to rise up again to meet the tide. Jaime could live with a bad reputation as long as he could have a life, but right now, he had neither. He needed to get back on his feet, and Brienne was afraid of just how far Jaime would go to do that.

 

“I don’t know,” she answered, shaking her head, “but you have to promise me something, Jaime.”

 

“What’s that?” he asked.

 

“You don’t go out there and act like a cowboy,” Brienne said firmly. “You don’t do anything without talking to me first. Because if you make one wrong move or one wrong decision, Jaime, then there’s no fixing what’s been done to your name. You want to fix it, I know. You can’t pretend with me. You want people to look at you with admiration again. You want to feel proud of who you are. You’re not going to be able to do that if you act before thinking. Right now, we’re only getting information. Nothing more, so don’t act. Don’t intrude, and do not put yourself out there if you can’t pull yourself back out.”

 

Jaime crossed his arms over his chest again. He had a thoughtful look on his face like he was mulling over the options in his head. After a short moment of silence, Jaime tilted his head to the side. “All right,” he conceded, meeting her gaze with pointed look. “No cowboy acts.”

 

“Good,” Brienne repeated, and she let out a sigh. “We don’t know what’s going on right now, Jaime. I’m just putting options out there, so let’s not jump ahead of ourselves, okay?”

 

Jaime nodded his head firmly. “No jumping,” he agreed. “Got it.”

 

“Let’s consider something for a second,” Brienne added, and she unfolded her arms and placed her palms against the edge of the counter behind her. “What’s the connection between Sandor and Renly with Sansa and Arya?”

 

“Aside from the obvious?” Jaime asked, lifting his eyebrows. “Sandor is dating Sansa, and he’s Arya’s camp counselor. That’s his connection with them.”

 

“Okay, so what’s Renly’s connection with them?” Brienne pushed further.

 

Jaime was quiet as he pondered on it. “Well, back when Sansa dated Joffrey, she met Renly a lot. Renly’s brother, Robert, is old friends with their father, Ned. In that case, Sansa and Arya might have known of Renly before Sansa even dated Joffrey.”

 

“So,” Brienne said, “Robert and Joffrey are the connection.”

 

“Yes,” Jaime said, “Robert and Joff—”

 

Brienne noticed it when Jaime suddenly cut off in the middle of saying Joffrey’s name. His eyes were cast down and off to the side, staring at a spot somewhere on the counter to his right. His mouth was parted slightly, and the look on his face had the look of a man who had just been shot. His hand slipped off the counter’s edge to fall to his side, and Brienne pushed herself forward to walk up to him.

 

She reached out, grasping him by the shoulder, and shook him gently. “Jaime?” Brienne asked him, her voice laced with concern. “Jaime, what is it?”

 

“They blackmailed me,” Jaime said barely above a whisper. “When they came to me with the offer against my father, they blackmailed me. They had files, papers, attesting to the children’s true parentage. Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen.” Jaime looked up at Brienne, his eyes glassy and wide. “The connection,” he said, and he held up his hand before her, forefinger and thumb pressed together tight, “the connection is Joffrey, Brienne. Joffrey is the connection.”

 

Brienne felt her face crease with disbelief. “But that doesn’t make any sense,” she refuted. “What does Arya have to do with blackmail against you? Why go after her or Sansa and hurt them? The blackmail was meant for you, not them, and the damage has already been done. That’s not a connection, Jaime.”

 

“What if Arya figured it out?” Jaime asked, sounding wilder with every second that passed them by. “What if Arya was kidnapped because she _saw_ something she wasn’t supposed to see? Got wind of evidence she wasn’t supposed to know about? What if they took her and meant to dispose of her to cover their tracks, but she managed to get away, and now they’re trying to clean up the mess she left behind when she stabbed Sandor?”

 

“Jaime,” Brienne said slowly, “you’re starting to sound like a madman. I love you, but that’s crazy.”

 

Jaime didn’t even look hurt by her words. Instead, he just stared at Brienne with a hard gaze. “You’re the one that came to me,” Jaime reminded her. “You have doubts about your friend, Sandor, or you wouldn’t have bothered to come to me to ask me about it, Brienne. Admit that to yourself before you go and call me crazy.”

 

Brienne was taken aback by his words. Letting go of his shoulder, she took a step back. Brienne turned her head towards the kitchen window, watching the orange glow of the evening sun pass through the glass and filter through the curtains. When she looked back at Jaime, he had already walked away from her. She saw his back as he retreated to the hallway and disappeared out of her sight.

 

Brienne stared at the soapy water sitting still in the sink. Frowning at herself, she rolled up her sleeves and grabbed a scour to finish the job that Jaime had started and walked away from.

 

 


	85. In My Face is Flashing Signs

_* * *_

 

Despite the upbeat music compromised of modernized Christmas carols echoing out of the stereo system downstairs, Sansa didn’t feel in a very spirited mood for the holidays. Christmas tunes floated up to Sansa’s room through the floor below her feet, a distant sound of merriment muffled by her closed door. Her room was dimly lit by only the lamp lights on her vanity and the lamp by her bed, where she was sitting with her hands folded in her lap. She was turning Sandor’s pearl necklace over in her hands, gazing over the softly glimmering gold. The pearls shone dimmer than the gold—but prettier, Sansa thought. A soft smile curled her lips faintly at the corners. She loved this necklace, but looking at it was just a sad reminder than Sandor wasn’t here tonight.

 

The entire house was decorated inside and out for the holidays. From the roof’s ledge to the ground level bushes, the Stark residence shone out into the black of night with twinkling lights of multiple colors hanging on icicle-shaped strings. The inside of the house was decorated with yards upon yards of tinsel made up of green, gold, red, blue, and silver. Deep green wreaths with holly barriers hung upon the staircase banister, and the largest one of all hung on the outside of the front door. The house itself was filled to the brim with family and friends—Stark, Tully, Arryn, and Karstark—from corner to corner, except up here in her room where Sansa had retreated to get away from it all for a while.

 

Sansa wanted to be by herself right now because Sandor had been invited over for Christmas, and yet he was nowhere to be found. She had watched and waited for his arrival, and then she had called his phone numerous times to try and get a hold of him, but all to no avail. Sansa had given up on thinking he would even come by, and she no longer expected the doorbell to ring and him be on the other end of it. It had rung all night long, and so far, only more distant relatives piled into the house. At the beginning of the night, Sansa had cheerily opted for taking over the door answering responsibilities, thinking that any moment it could be Sandor ringing the bell. She had imagined in her head pulling open the door and grinning at the sight of him, and then he would grin back at her. Her hopes had been extinguished, however, after about the thirtieth or so doorbell ring.

 

As she sat there upon her bed, looking down at the necklace in her hands, Sansa heard a knock at her door. She raised her eyes from her lap and gazed at the door with an expression of uncertainty written across her face, wrinkling her nose as she wondered who was there. The knock against the door took on the tune of ‘Jingle Bells,’ and Sansa felt herself roll her eyes with a deep sigh. She knew who it was immediately without having to ask. Only one person would knock on her door to the tune of ‘Jingle Bells.’

 

“Come in,” Sansa called out, unable to fight off the slight sound of exasperation in her voice. When the door opened up, though, it revealed two of her brothers standing there on the other side instead of just one. Sansa’s mouth fell open with surprise, her eyes widening somewhat.

 

Jon smiled sheepishly at her and waved, arcing his hand upward in a half-circle. Beside Jon with his hand on the doorknob was Theon, leaning over into her room with a more blasé look on his face. Theon let go of her door, and then he righted himself. Meanwhile, Jon shoved his hands halfway into his pockets and left his thumbs hanging out. Whereas Theon looked lean and cool in his black sweater and dark pants, Jon looked like a cute bundle of awkwardness in his Christmas themed sweater with his button-up shirt collar folded over it at the top of the neckline.

 

Theon walked into her room first. Jon piled in behind him, pulling the door shut. Sansa felt her confusion grow even more at their actions as she glanced between her brothers, wondering what this was about. Theon took a seat on her bed to the right of her, and Jon took a seat on her bed to the left of her. Sansa kept looking between them, her mouth hanging open, when she realized they probably meant to drag her out of her room and back downstairs to the crowd below, but Sansa didn’t want to go back out there just yet. She wasn’t ready to face the crowd and force a smile at everyone. She wasn’t depressed or anything like that, but she was upset and it was a valid enough reason for her to retreat for a little while.

 

Nobody was paying attention to Sansa downstairs, anyway. There weren’t many younger people in their family. Most of them were older, and they were here to talk to Mum and Dad and each other more than they were here to mingle with Sansa, Arya, or any of their brothers. In the days when they were all younger, her and her sister and brothers all used to go into the backyard and play during the holiday get-togethers. Sansa recalled a time when they had a small basketball court in the backyard before Rickon had been born. Robb and Theon had taken it upon themselves to teach Jon, Sansa, and Arya how to play. Bran had been just a toddler at the time, and he had simply sat on the sidelines and watched them all with wonder in his eyes.

 

Apparently, her reason for retreat wasn’t a good enough reason for her brothers. Theon cleared his throat rather loudly to Sansa’s right, and Jon cleared his throat a little more quietly to her left. Sansa let out a deep sigh, lowering her gaze back to her lap. She bundled up the necklace in her fist, hiding it from view. Lifting her eyes again, Sansa glanced between both of them. She raised her eyebrows in a questioning manner at her brothers.

 

“What is it?” she asked them, glancing from Jon to Theon.

 

“You should come downstairs,” Jon said, and Sansa bit down on her bottom lip at his answer. She knew it. She had guessed at their reason for coming up to her room when she had seen them both standing in front of her doorway with those mildly concerned expressions upon their faces.

 

“I don’t want to come downstairs right now,” Sansa answered him.

 

“Are you having a pity party all alone up here in your room just because your boyfriend hasn’t come over?” Theon taunted her. “C’mon, he’s a prick, anyway.”

 

“He’s not a prick,” Sansa calmly disagreed with her brother, shaking her head at him. She didn’t get upset or mad at Theon because she knew Theon had a thing against Sandor ever since Sandor had punched him in the nose all those months ago. Theon’s nose would never again been the same after that punch. It was all crooked now, and Theon held a grudge against Sandor about the damage done to his looks.

 

“I don’t even see how you date him,” Theon replied in snide manner. “I’m your _brother_ , and look at what he did to my nose.” Sansa glanced over at Theon just in time to see him jut his finger at his nose to point it out to her. “See?” he said. “It’s broken. Permanently, and it’s all his fault.”

 

“No, it’s my fault,” Sansa sighed. “If only I had taken a moment to talk to him and tell him I was hanging out with my brothers that night—”

 

“Well, you know,” Theon interrupted, “he shouldn’t go around just _punching_ people in the fa—”

 

“Theon’s got a point, you know,” Jon offered cheerily, cutting Theon off, “and I never agree with him.”

 

“Thanks, Jon,” Theon said. Upon realizing what Jon had just said, though, Theon quickly cut his head towards their brother. “ _Hey_ —”

 

Jon held up his hands in a defensive manner. “Hey, I’m just telling it like it is.”

 

“I _know_ you both mean well,” Sansa told her brothers, butting in before anything more was said, “but I’m not depressed or anything. I’m just disappointed.” She stared out ahead of herself at nothing in particular, hearing the drop in her own voice. “He was supposed to be here tonight,” Sansa murmured, her eyes falling back to her lap. “That’s all.”

 

“Maybe he couldn’t make it?” Jon suggested, trying to get her mind off of it in a nicer way than Theon. Sansa felt Jon’s arm go around her shoulders from the left, and she leaned into him, welcoming the kindness. From her right, she felt Theon casually throw his arm her shoulders, too, entangling his arm with Jon’s. Theon leaned into her as well with a purposefulness that said he was mimicking Jon as more of a joke than anything.

 

“Yeah,” Theon added to Jon’s suggestion, “maybe someone egged his car.”

 

Sansa gasped, pulling away from her brothers and jumping up from the bed. She whirled around, facing Jon and Theon with a look of pure ire on her face as she pointed a finger at both of them.

 

“You did _not_ ,” she accused, looking between each of them.

 

Jon’s eyes went wide as he immediately held up his arms, while Theon put on a false look of innocence and glanced left to right.

 

“No—” Jon said.

 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Theon said simultaneously.

 

Sansa put her hands on her hips as she glared at Theon.

 

“Theon _Greyjoy_ Stark!” she exclaimed.

 

Theon’s mouth dropped open in shock as his eyes grew wide from it. He jumped up from the bed, pointing a finger at Sansa. “You take that _back_!” Theon threw at her.

 

“I will not!” Sansa said fiercely, and she narrowed her eyes at Theon. “Did you egg his car, Theon?”

 

Theon started to look nervous as he stood there, and his eyes gazed to the side instead of looking directly at her before he answered her. Theon cut them back to Sansa with a more assured expression on his face when he found his answer. “No,” Theon simply said, and it was the biggest lie Sansa had ever heard out of his mouth.

 

Sansa ran to the head of her bed and snatched up a pillow. “Oh shit!” she heard Theon say, and then he dashed immediately for the door as Jon started laughing from her bed.

 

“Jon!” Sansa called to him. “Grab a pillow! Get him!”

 

Jon jumped up from her bed and snatched up another pillow, following Sansa’s command. The door to her bedroom flew open with a loud bang against the wall as Theon made a maddened dash for the staircase. Sansa ran after him, holding a pillow in one hand as she used the other one to steady herself down the staircase. She heard Jon’s footsteps behind her, echoing loudly thanks to his heavy boots.

 

Theon reached the crowd at the bottom before her and Jon, and Sansa saw them scatter as Theon dashed right into the middle of them. Loud exclamations flew over the Christmas music, and Sansa closed her eyes briefly and let out a squeal as she fell into the crowd, trying to hurry after her brother, Theon. Jon let out a purposeful holler behind her, which sounded suspiciously like a war call, and he probably did it so she wouldn’t feel embarrassed for her sudden squeal.

 

They chased Theon straight out to the backyard, where he apparently meant to jump over the fence to escape, but Catelyn hadn’t cut the trees or the hedges this year, and they were so overgrown that there was no climbing over them. Theon skidded to a halt in front of the fence, which was taken over by overgrown plant life, holding out his arms at either side of his body. Theon looked quickly left and right, discerning a route of escape, but Sansa held up the pillow with both hands as she ran towards him, letting out a continuous holler this time. Beside her, Jon did the same.

 

Theon whirled around just in time to see them, and his eyes flew open wide as Sansa’s pillow came down hard against his head.

 

Jon attacked him from the side as Sansa whacked Theon over the head. Theon fell to his knees against the grass, trying to shield his head with his arms.

 

“Mercy!” Theon cried out. “ _Mercy_!”

 

“Never!” Sansa hollered out, and she whacked him again.

 

“Ow! Ow, _stop_ it!” Theon said under their assault, and finally, Jon pulled back, breathing hard as he held the pillow in both hands.

 

“Sansa, I think that’s good enough,” Jon said, out of breath.

 

Sansa whacked Theon one more time, and she hit him hard enough that he fell over and toppled to the ground on his side. Theon rolled over onto his back, still holding up his hands as if it might shield him from further attack. Sansa stood there, holding her pillow in both hands, breathing as hard as Jon.

 

“Okay,” she managed to say between breaths, “now it’s good enough.”

 

“Next time,” Theon said from the ground, taking a pause to breathe deeply, “I’ll throw feathers onto his car after I egg it.”

 

Sansa gritted her teeth as she lifted her pillow again, and Theon threw his arms over his head as he balled himself up, hollering, “No! Please!” Sansa didn’t hit him with the pillow again. She just took another deep breath, dropping her arms back to her sides. Jon laughed hysterically on the other side of Theon, bending over to place his hands against his knees as he leaned forward.

 

Theon peeked through his arms, and when he saw Sansa wasn’t going to hit him again, he slowly lowered his arms to the ground to prop himself up.

 

Sansa took his unarmed opportunity to whack him over the head one last time, and Jon laughed so hard he fell down onto his bottom against the ground.

 

Sansa was laughing, too, because it was nice to have a laugh with her brothers. Jon was laughing, and she was laughing, and before she knew it, even Theon was laughing as he lay sprawled out across the ground before her.

 

Their laughing was interrupted, though, by a loud crash inside of the house.

 

Sansa whipped her head towards the sound in alarm, and when she glanced over at her brothers, they were staring in shock at the house, too. Quickly, Theon and Jon got up from the ground and hurried for the door back to the kitchen. Sansa dropped the pillow in her hands as Jon had done, leaving both of her pillows on the ground outside in the backyard, as she rushed after her brothers back to the house.

 

Jon led the three of them into the kitchen from the backyard, and Sansa found herself pressed up close against Theon’s back as they weaved their way through a shocked crowd. She placed her hand against Theon’s sweater and grasped it so as to not lose them in the crowd, and then she followed Theon’s urgent footsteps through the swarm of bodies from the kitchen to the dining room to the edge of the living room, where Theon suddenly halted in place. Sansa lifted her chin and stood on her tiptoes to gaze over Theon’s shoulder at the scene ahead. First, she only saw the back of Jon’s curly head, and she leaned closer to Theon to try and get a better look. She was so close she could smell his cologne.

 

There, in the living room, one of the refreshment tables had been knocked clean over onto the floor, making a huge mess against the carpet. Sansa felt her jaw fall open as she stared at the wreckage, and then she glanced hurriedly through the crowd, trying to find the source of the broken table. She saw her mom, Catelyn, helping a smaller man straighten out his messed up clothing. His grey suit was stained from head to toe with food and wine. Catelyn leaned forward to take his head into her hands, gently inspecting him for any wounds. Almost dismissively, but happy for the attention, the man tried to shoo her off with a smile.

 

“I’ll be fine,” the man insisted in a familiar voice, and Sansa narrowed her eyes at him. “I promise, Cat,” the man said, softer that time. “I’m _fine_.”

 

Sansa knew that voice. When he raised his chin, she also recognized his face.

 

He was the man from television, the lawyer for Uncle Jaime.

 

Sansa furrowed her brow, wondering what he was doing here, when she heard her father’s voice from a place out of sight to her over a sea of heads.

 

“Get out of my house,” came Ned’s deadly calm voice over the crowd, and Sansa tried to look over their heads to see who he was talking to with a tone like that, searching for a face responsible for the causing of all this—

 

She caught sight of his face beyond the heads, and gasped inward sharply as an ache shot through her heart. Sansa let go of Theon’s shirt, and tried to push past the bodies. “Let me through—” she said, but they weren’t moving, and she was squished between them. Sansa glanced up to see Sandor looking out across the crowd with bloodshot, narrowed eyes but a wounded expression upon his face. It was almost like he was looking for something that wasn’t there, looking for—

 

Sansa gritted her teeth and shoved through the crowd of tight bodies, wriggling her way through them to the edge of the crowd as Sandor took a slow step back, and then another, before he turned around and headed for the door.

 

“Sandor!” Sansa called out, and almost everyone in the crowd turned to look at her, including Sandor. It was utter silence in the house as she had called out to him. Nobody had dared to speak while Ned Stark was giving orders in his own house, but as Sansa burst out of the crowd and tried to head straight for Sandor, Ned reached out with his arm in front of her and blocked her path.

 

“You’re staying right here, Sansa,” Ned ordered, and the deep tone of his voice was laced with brimming anger. Sansa immediately looked up at him. Normally, she would have pushed her father’s arm away from her and stalked past him, but that tone of his voice mixed with that furious expression on his face caused Sansa to gulp down whatever words of rebellion she meant to say to her father and swallow them whole. She had never seen such a look of fury on her father’s face before, and having never seen it before, she was genuinely afraid to test it.

 

Sansa looked out at Sandor. He stood there by the front door, jaw tight and eyes bloodshot and dark circles underneath them. When he moved again, he looked as if he was swaying unsteadily on his feet. Sansa inhaled a sharp breath, feeling another pang in her chest. Sandor had been drinking again. Sansa felt a watery sting at the back of her eyes, and as Sandor pulled open the front door to leave, she turned to her father.

 

“Dad,” Sansa whispered with worry, “he can’t drive like that. He’s drunk—”

 

“He drove himself here,” Ned stated harshly. “He can drive himself back.”

 

Sansa whipped her head towards the door again just in time to see it shut. She let out a shaky breath, and Ned dropped his arm from her. “Theon, Robb, and Jon,” Ned called out without looking to see where they were, but knowing they were close, “help me clean this up.” Sansa watched in stunned silence as Ned stepped forward to the broken table and spilled debris. The crowd parted at various spots to allow her brothers to pass through the swarm of bodies, and they all bent over to help their father lift up the table and move it out of the way. Other friends and family began to help with the disaster zone, and Sansa drifted away from the mess over to her mother and the Uncle Jaime’s lawyer. She wanted to know what had happened here, and her mother would give her an answer.

 

As she drew towards them, Uncle Jaime’s lawyer spotted her first. His sharp and beady eyes settled onto her as a small smirk formed upon his face, and he tilted in his head in a greeting at her.

 

“You must be Miss Sansa,” the man said with his quirked lips, and Sansa noted that he had a peculiar accent. She tipped her head towards him in a polite but wordless greeting in return. Then, she glanced from him to her mother.

 

“Mum, what happened here?” Sansa asked, wanting to know what would cause Sandor to throw somebody into a table—because that was exactly what it looked like from here.

 

Catelyn opened her mouth to speak, but she looked exhausted and stressed out as she raised her hand to rub her forehead, and Uncle Jaime’s lawyer decided to answer for her.

 

“A drunken brute has no place in a wholesome party such as this,” the man said slyly, and Sansa turned to look at him, narrowing her eyes at his choice of words for Sandor. Already, she didn’t like him. When she glanced back at her mother for verification, Catelyn didn’t even look angry that he had interrupted her and spoken for her. Catelyn, instead, looked relieved.

 

“He attacked my friend Petyr here for no reason at all,” Catelyn informed her, sighing at the admittance as she shook her head. “He walked in drunk, in a bad mood, and just took it out on the first guest who spoke to him.”

 

“Savage beast,” Petyr announced idly, and Sansa gaped at him.

 

“Sandor is _not_ a savage beast,” Sansa snapped all of a sudden, having completely forgotten her manners for a new guest such as Petyr. Right now, though, she didn’t care. In her newly blossoming indignation, Sansa whirled around on her heels and stalked away from them. If they were going to talk about Sandor like that, then they weren’t going to talk about him like that in front of her. She didn’t have to listen to it if she didn’t want to.

 

Sansa hurried up the staircase to her bedroom, shutting the door behind herself with such a force that she didn’t know was in her. She was absolutely furious, but most of all, she was worried about Sandor. She rushed over to her window and pulled back the curtain, gazing out into the darkness beyond her room to the street below. The street was lit up by the various Christmas lights strung up from house to house as well as by the street lamps and their Christmas themed wire ornaments hung with colorful lights. Sansa’s gaze eagerly scanned the ground below as her hand touched the window’s cold glass, her eyes looking for Sandor amongst the parked cars below.

 

She spotted him at last, yanking open a car door, though she noticed no smears of egg goop on his vehicle. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered if Theon had just been joking with her about egging Sandor’s car. In the forefront of her mind, she worried about his safety driving home on the dark roads tonight if there was alcohol in his system. Her hand flattened against the cool glass, and her breath fogged it up as she breathed through her mouth onto the window.

 

Sandor looked up just then, and he saw her in the window. He paused, the look of anger falling from his face to be replaced with something much calmer. Sansa stared back at him, feeling her hand warm up the glass as it pressed against it. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed as they stared across the distance at each other, but eventually, Sandor tore his gaze away from hers, and he got into his vehicle. She heard him slam his car door shut in the night, and Sansa pulled away from her window to rush across her room back to her bedroom door. She nearly ripped it open and dashed down the steps to the first floor, pushing her way through the crowd to get to her brothers and father.

 

Sansa grabbed Jon by his sweater and tugged urgently on the sleeve. Jon turned around immediately, spotting Sansa, and his look of confusion became one of softened recognition when he saw her standing there behind him. “Hey, Sansa,” he said in a lowered voice. “What is it?”

 

“I want you to—” she began, but before she could finish her sentence, she heard the distant noise of a car speeding down the road. The words died on her tongue as her heart plummeted inside of her chest. Sansa realized she was staring at the front door, so she tore her gaze away from it to look back at Jon again. “Jon,” she whispered fervently, “Sandor is drunk, and he shouldn’t be driving—”

 

A frown creased over Jon’s face. “But he’s already left,” Jon said, shrugging his shoulders. “What do you want me to do?”

 

“Can you follow him home?” she asked, her voice strained with worry. “Make sure he gets there safe?”

 

Jon let out a sigh. “Sansa—”

 

“Please, Jon,” she begged. “He shouldn’t be out there driving. Dad should have at least called him a cab. What if he hurts himself or somebody else—”

 

“Oh, all right,” Jon conceded with a mild tone of exasperation to his voice, and he rolled his head back as he said it. When he straightened his head again, he looked forward at Sansa with a pointed expression. “I’ll follow him home and make sure he gets there safe without hurting himself or anybody else, but you’ll have to come with me because I don’t know the way to his house.”

 

Instead of saying anything, Sansa threw her arms around Jon’s neck. She almost knocked him over in doing so, and Jon had to plant his feet more firmly on the ground as he wrapped his arms around Sansa to return the hug.

 

“You know,” Jon said quietly near her ear, “one of these days, you’re going to knock me into a bed of needles and kill me, Sansa. You’re bigger than Arya. I can’t catch you like I can catch her.”

 

Sansa parted herself from his embrace, placed her hands on Jon’s shoulders, and planted a quick kiss on both of his cheeks. When she pulled away from Jon, she smiled brightly at him.

 

“Let me go get my coat,” Sansa said all of a sudden, and she let go of him to run back upstairs to grab her coat and some of her things before rushing back down the steps again to meet him once more. Jon was grabbing his coat from the wall rack, and he slipped it onto one arm as he fished his keys out of his pocket. When he had his coat properly in place, Jon turned to face her and looked surprised to see her already ready so soon.

 

“Man, you’re quick,” Jon said.

 

“We’ve got to hurry,” Sansa told him, pushing past him towards the front door. In the background their other brothers were still helping their father clean up the mess, but with the help of many other family members and friends chiming in, they weren’t going to miss Jon’s presence from their work.

 

“All right, all right,” Jon said, “I’m coming.”

 

Together, Sansa and Jon slipped out of the house before anyone could take notice of them departing from the scene. Sansa ran over to Jon’s jeep as he pressed the unlock feature on his keychain, the jeep giving off a beeping noise into the night as it unlocked by the remote control device in his hands. Sansa hopped into the passenger side as Jon rushed around to the driver’s side to hop in, too. They almost shut their doors simultaneously, but Sansa buckled up before her brother did. Once Jon’s seatbelt was clicked in place, he stuck the key in the engine and cranked the jeep.

 

As Jon pulled off into the street, his foot pressed down onto the gas peddle with more force than was necessary in order to catch up with Sandor in time. If Jon went the speed limit, then he would never catch up with him. Sansa knew it, but it still scared her to go so fast down such a narrow road riddled with so many curves. She could hear the roar of the engine lift above the wind that poured in through Jon’s open windows, singing out from under the hood loud enough to make her heart skip a beat in fear. Her heart soared in her chest with the roar of the engine in her ears.

 

Her hands clutched for purchase onto the door and the armrest, but her grip did nothing to ease the sudden fright accumulating inside of her chest. Sansa closed her eyes against the wind in her face, which also whipped her ponytail through the air behind her. The wind was so strong and so cold that it stung against her skin, and Sansa winced at the pain it brought her.

 

 _Do you think it can go any faster?_ she heard Joffrey’s cruel voice echo in the back of her mind, though she barely heard it over the noise of the engine and the howl of the wind.

 

Unconsciously, her grip tightened on the door and the armrest beside her.

 

 


	86. Seek It Out and Ye Shall Find

_* * *_

 

Arya stared forward at the cards in her hand, not having in her possession one of the number that Gendry had asked for a few seconds ago. She sighed wistfully and tucked a lock of stray hair behind her ear with her fingers, wondering if she should just go ahead and put down her cards and end the game right here and now. Arya had lost interest in the game about thirty minutes ago, but they were still playing because she didn’t want to go downstairs. On Arya’s first day home from the hospital around a whole crowd of family members, they couldn’t stop asking her if she was all right. Some of them even asked inappropriate questions about what had happened to her, and Arya couldn’t just reach out and slap any of them, so she resolved herself to stay away from them instead. It was better this way, after all.

 

Up here in the silence of her room, Arya could lose herself in the quiet. A distant part of her mind could almost pretend this was a forest, her room with its walls of a rich, dark green hue dimly lit like an evening grove. She could close her and eyes and transport herself, but Gendry was here with her, and she couldn’t just ignore him. Arya sighed again at her dilemma, and she held out her hand over the deck of cards that lay between them on her bed. Opening her grasp, she let them fall. They clattered softly to the stack below, and when she raised her eyes, Gendry was looking at her pointedly over the row of cards in his hands.

 

“What was that for?” he asked slowly, quirking a single eyebrow upward.

 

Instead of answering him, Arya bent forward and swept her arm over the covers, knocking all of the cards to the floor. Any that remained behind, she grabbed up and tossed them down. Arya dropped herself to the bed backwards with a great huff, staring up at the ceiling for a long while without words. She felt a shift in the bed, heard the sound of Gendry dropping his cards to the floor as well, and then she felt the bed sink beside her as he lay down to join her.

 

Arya turned on her side to face him, seeing Gendry propped upright on his arm, staring down at her with his concerned blue eyes. When they fought, they fought like cats and dogs, but when he realized something was wrong, Gendry’s temper was non-existent. It was a good thing because both of them were headstrong and temperamental at times, and there were occasions where they threw harsh words at each other with only the purpose of hurting each other. It wasn’t as bad now as it had been when they were younger, but it was still there.

 

Arya’s bed was small. It was only made for one person, so she scooted closer to Gendry, but she didn’t put an arm around him. Gendry took her scooting closer as an invitation, though, so he put his arm over her and drew her closer. He had been less physical with her as of late. Ever since it was all over, Arya had noticed Gendry wouldn’t touch her or kiss her without waiting for her to initiate it or by asking for her permission first. He was very conscious of her personal space and very gentle with her when he did touch her. Gendry treated her like a fragile doll he could break at any moment, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Arya had a feeling she would smack him or shove him if he tried to be too grabby or touchy with her. She didn’t like being touched unless it was something she initiated first, so his careful behavior was a good thing.

 

They lay there in silence for some time, though it wasn’t as silent as Arya would have liked for it to be. Down below, she could hear the muffled beat of familiar Christmas music reverberating through the house. Here in Gendry’s arms up in her room, she could hear his steady breathing as well as her own. The sound was relaxing as it filled her up with peace, and she allowed her eyelids to droop to a close. She felt the bed shift again as Gendry pulled his arm out from underneath his head and laid himself down more fully upon the pillow.

 

Everything was nice again for once in a long while. At least it felt that way to her, even though Arya hadn’t been at Ramsay’s cabin for much time at all. It had felt like a long time, unending and terrifying, and then suddenly, she was back in her normal life again. It was going to take some getting used to. Most of the time, Arya found herself leaving the light on when she went to sleep. Occasionally, she even contemplated buying a nightlight. Sixteen, and she wanted a nightlight. She didn’t like the dark anymore. It wasn’t comforting as it once was.

 

Her parents had found out about Gendry at the hospital, figuring it out on their own when they walked into the room with Arya and Gendry holding hands, but neither Ned nor Cat had said a single word to her or Gendry about it. Arya was glad for it, although she figured it was because of everything else that they didn’t want to put her through more stress by saying something to her about it. They left it alone, and they even let Gendry come over to the house without shooing him away.

 

Arya almost drifted off into a nap, but then she heard a loud crash downstairs.

 

Her eyes shot open, and she jolted back to full consciousness. She felt Gendry’s body jerk next to hers as well. Together, they stared at each other under the dim light of her lamp, but neither one of them dared to move from their spot on the bed. Arya blinked, not wanting to speak. In silence they waited and listened, but nothing else followed the noise. Arya relaxed beside Gendry again, dismissing the sound from below as nothing more than drunken relatives going at it again. It seemed to happen every Christmas. Somebody had a little too much to drink, and someone else said something they shouldn’t have said, and it resulted in a physical row. Arya sighed, and rested her forehead against Gendry’s collarbone.

 

“What was that?” Gendry asked in a low voice, but Arya just shook her head in response.

 

“I don’t know,” she said. “Probably Uncle Brynden getting into it with Uncle Jon again.”

 

“I thought they liked each other,” Gendry commented offhandedly.

 

“They do,” Arya answered, “until they get into a pissing contest.”

 

Gendry chuckled beside her. “Your family,” he said.

 

Arya sighed. “My family,” she agreed.

 

They both fell quiet again, and she put her arm around Gendry at last. He was warm, and so Arya curled into him and closed her eyes, though she wished she had a blanket to cozy up into as well. They were lying on top of her usual covers, and Arya didn’t want to move to crawl under them. Just then, she remembered the quilt thrown over the footboard of her bed.

 

“Can you grab the blanket near our feet?” she asked Gendry, and he took his arm away from her as he sat up on the bed. She felt him reach over to grab it, and not long after that, Gendry was lying beside her again with the quilt covering them up and encasing their warmth around them. Arya sighed pleasantly, curling into him once more. She was glad everybody was busy with themselves downstairs. Nobody would come up here and bother her while she was with Gendry.

 

Arya drifted off for a while, but when she woke up, she found Gendry had rolled away from her on the bed, stealing the blanket with him. She frowned, instantly feeling the cold, and pushed herself up from the bed. Instead of waking him up, she decided to put on her slippers and go downstairs.

 

It was late, and Arya only knew this because of the startling lack of music. When she stepped out of her room, there was complete silence throughout the house. As she descended down the steps, she glanced over the staircase banister. Arya noticed the living room was empty, save for someone passed out on the couch, and a mess of tinsel everywhere. Frowning to herself, she wondered what had caused the tinsel to get everywhere. She sure as hell wasn’t cleaning it up later.

 

She padded her way into the kitchen, freezing when she saw her mother sitting at the table with somebody else. The two of them were bent over in their chairs, leaning towards each other, deep in conversation. Both of them looked up at her as she came around the corner, though. Arya thought everyone was asleep, but Catelyn was still up and entertaining one of their guests. It was a person Arya didn’t recognize. She had never seen him at any of their Christmas reunions in the past, not unless it had been a few years since he had shown up, in which case Arya probably never paid any attention to him before. He smiled at her, though, and his smile was crooked and it didn’t reach his eyes.

 

“Oh, Arya, I thought you were asleep,” Catelyn said, and she rubbed her hand over her forehead. Arya blinked, taking it as an invitation to walk into the scene. She padded into the kitchen silently at first, heading straight for the fridge.

 

“Yeah,” Arya replied as she walked, and she grabbed for the refrigerator handle to pull it open when she reached it. “I was, but I just woke up.” She removed a jug of milk from the middle shelf inside, and then she reached for a cup in the drainer. Even though Arya’s back was turned to them, her mother kept speaking as Arya poured herself a cup of milk to drink.

 

“This is my old friend, Petyr,” Catelyn told her from behind, and though Arya couldn’t see him, he greeted her.

 

“Hello, Arya,” Petyr said.

 

The cup in her hands slipped from her grasp, falling to the floor and bouncing, and it made a mess everywhere. Arya managed to grasp the jug of milk with both hands since they were free now, preventing it from slipping from her grasp as well. She expected to hear her mother get upset over it, but as Arya safely set the jug on the counter, she only heard a soft sigh from Catelyn behind her.

 

“Don’t worry about it, Arya,” Catelyn told her. “It’s been like that all evening.”

 

“I’ll clean it up,” Arya said, refusing to turn around and face either one of them. She was trying to steady her shaking hands as they still grasped the jug.

 

“No, no, dear,” Catelyn insisted, pushing back her chair with a screech as she got up from the table. “I’ll get it. You just pour yourself another cup.”

 

Arya followed her mother’s advice. She took another clean cup from the strainer. Using the counter as leverage, she poured the cup halfway full and screwed the cap back onto the milk jug. Holding the cup with both hands, Arya took a deep breath. Her hands steadied a little, but not much.

 

“I’m sorry,” Arya forced herself to say, and it saved her because she yawned just then, too. “I’m still half-asleep. I’ll go back to bed before I drop something else.”

 

She turned around without looking at Petyr and headed straight into the living room, making a beeline for the stairs and going up them slowly to not cause any type of scene. When she got back into her room, she closed the door. Putting the cup down, Arya immediately locked it to feel safe again.

 

It was stupid. There was no way Petyr was the man from the cabin, but his voice sounded so familiar to her that for one dark instant Arya was transported back to Ramsay’s bed, tied up, blindfolded, and helpless. The reawakened memory had caused the cup to slip from her hands, and the jug had almost slipped with it. It had been pure luck that she managed to catch it in time.

 

Arya had never seen Petyr before. She couldn’t recall his face. He was nobody to her, but her mother had called him an old friend, so maybe he was somebody her mother hadn’t seen in a long time. He could have been a childhood friend. Arya didn’t know the answer to that, but she wasn’t going to go prying around for it tonight. Her hands were still shaking. Instead of going back to the bed, Arya sat down on the floor by her door, and she picked up the cup to gulp down some of the milk.

 

She heard a rustling noise from the bed, looking up at the sound. Gendry sat up, rubbing his face and then running his hand through his messy hair. He glanced around the room, spotted her, and threw his legs over the edge of the bed. With a dazed walk, he made his way over to her and sat down beside her.

 

“What are you doing over here?” he asked, groggy with sleep. Gendry swayed slightly, and Arya lowered the cup to her lap, holding it with both hands.

 

“I had to sit down for a second,” Arya said quickly. “My hands were shaking. My legs, too. Just a little bit. Not much.”

 

Gendry frowned at her. “Why were your hands shaking?”

 

Arya didn’t want to answer him, but she knew he would want an answer. “I had a flashback,” she admitted, “to the cabin.”

 

Gendry stilled. He looked down at the floor, silent. Arya lifted the cup back to her mouth, taking another few gulps and finishing what milk was left in it. It was awkward all of a sudden, and she knew why. Gendry didn’t know what to say or do in response to that. Finally, though, he spoke up without looking up.

 

“Do you want to come back to bed?” Gendry asked this time, and he looked up at her after the last word had passed his lips. Arya stared at him, but she nodded her head.

 

“Sure,” she simply said.

 

She placed the cup aside, out of the way of the door, and pushed herself to her feet. Gendry stood up as well, and he held his hand out to her. Arya accepted it, and he led her back over to her bed. Gendry let go of her hand long enough to pull back the covers, and he moved aside to let her slide in first. She did, and he crawled into the bed after her, pulling the sheets and blanket and quilt over them both. Arya realized her slippers were still on her feet, but it would be okay. They weren’t dirty, so her bed would survive their presence on her feet.

 

Gendry curled up against her back, winding his arm closely around her middle and settling his head close to the crook of her neck. His legs were molded right behind hers, and she felt his breath on the back of her neck. Arya couldn’t shut her mind down, though. She stared out at the wall across from her, her thoughts running a thousand miles an hour inside of her head. She couldn’t stop thinking about the voice. Petyr’s voice sounded so familiar to her when she had never met him in her entire life—or had she? Maybe once when she was a little girl, but no, that wasn’t the type of memory his voice had dredged up in her mind. His voice had brought back Ramsay’s cabin and Ramsay’s ropes and the stench of her own dirty clothes that hadn’t been washed in over a week—

 

“Gendry,” Arya said all of a sudden.

 

“Hmm?” he hummed from behind her, and she felt his breath on her skin again.

 

“Kiss me,” she told him.

 

“What?” Gendry blurted out, lifting his head from the pillow.

 

“I can’t stop thinking,” Arya said, “so kiss me.”

 

“Why would you—”

 

“Damn it, Gendry,” Arya snapped, “just _kiss_ me.”

 

Gendry was silent at first. He hovered behind her as if debating the demand, but then she felt his hand brush away her hair from the nape of her neck, exposing it to the air. He lowered his mouth to the newly bared skin, placing a gentle kiss on her neck. Arya let her eyelids flutter to a close. Gendry pulled away, but his lips came down again, and his hand touched her shoulder. Her skin tingled from his touch, and she leaned into him, but then she found herself turning around in bed to face him. Reaching out for his cheeks, she cupped them and pulled him close. Their lips met for a real kiss this time.

 

In the near darkness of her room, it was easy to get caught up in it. Gendry was warm, comfortable, and familiar, and Arya wrapped her arms around his neck as they kissed a bit more passionately on her bed. He leaned over her some, placing Arya onto her back. One of her hands remained on his neck, but the other trailed down his spine. Gendry moaned against her mouth, turning his head more to the side to deepen the kiss. Arya’s thoughts went flying away from her.

 

As she lifted her hand to his hair to her fingers over his scalp, she heard a noise at her door.

 

Arya froze, turning her head away from Gendry to break the kiss. He stopped, freezing as well, though when she turned to look back at him, his expression of confusion was as plain as day on his face.

 

“Did you hear that?” Arya whispered.

 

Gendry furrowed his brow, listening in the dark. Outside of her door, there were muffled footsteps.

 

“I hear that,” Gendry whispered back.

 

“Let me up,” Arya said, and Gendry quickly got off of her. She slid off the bed as quietly as possible, padding over to her bedroom door. Gendry followed her as quietly as possible. Arya got down on the floor, peeking out through the opening at the bottom of her door. She saw a shadow outside, and then she noticed a pair of feet. They walked away from her door over to Sansa’s door. With a soft click, Sansa’s door opened inward into her room. Arya’s eyes went wide, and she lifted herself immediately to unlock her door. As soundlessly as possible, Arya cracked open her door to look through it.

 

The figure had already disappeared into Sansa’s room. The door was still open, though. Arya stared at it, wondering what was going on. Thinking her sister still home, Arya opened her bedroom door the rest of the way and hurried across the hall, crouching beside Sansa’s open door. She peeked around the corner and saw Petyr looking around Sansa’s room. Sansa wasn’t in it. Arya’s forehead wrinkled with confusion, but she noticed Petyr spotted something and seemed to stop at it.

 

Petyr leaned over Sansa’s bed, picking up a glittering chain of pearls from the rumpled sheets. It was a necklace. It dangled in his hand for just a moment, and then he pocketed the chain in his coat, turning around all of a sudden to leave.

 

Arya pulled her head out of sight, and then she hurried across the hall back to her room. Gendry was crouched there by her door, but he moved out of the way as quickly as possible to let her pass. She closed her door almost all the way, and when she peeked out again, Petyr was leaving Sansa’s room. He closed the door behind himself and started down the steps in a hurry.

 

“He stole Sansa’s necklace,” Arya said below her breath.

 

“What?” Gendry asked from behind her.

 

“He stole Sansa’s _necklace_ ,” Arya repeated more forcefully. “I saw him pocket it.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“Yes, I’m sure,” she snapped. “I saw it. I’m going to stop him—”

 

Arya made a move to get up, but Gendry pulled her back down.

 

“Arya,” he warned, “don’t do anything stupid.”

 

Arya whirled around to face him with wide eyes. “Don’t do anything stupid?” she shot back. “I _saw_ him do it. He has it in his pocket.”

 

“And if he hides it and you go to your mother, what then?” Gendry asked. “They already think you’re making stuff up for attention. It’ll only get _worse_.”

 

Her mouth fell open. She sat there in stunned shock. For a moment, she thought about shoving Gendry for saying that, or shoving him out of the way to go after Petyr, but then she heard the front door open and close downstairs. By then, it was too late to do anything. Arya gritted her teeth and shoved Gendry, anyway. He deserved it for stopped her in the first place.

 

“You _idiot_ ,” she hissed. “Now he got away with it!”

 

“It’s just a necklace!” Gendry said. “She can get a new one.”

 

“But why would he steal it!” Arya argued with him, running through all of the possible reasons in her head. He was a thief came to the forefront, or maybe he would try to sell it to make money off of it, which sounded stupid in her head. Who did that sort of thing these days, anyway?

 

“I don’t know!” Gendry hissed back. “But it’s not worth it, you getting into trouble over a damn necklace!”

 

Arya huffed in frustration at him, sitting back on her heels and crossing her arms over her chest. It bothered her that she hadn’t stopped Petyr, and it bothered her that Gendry had stopped her, but now there was nothing she could do about it. It was done and over with, and Petyr was out of the house with the necklace. Arya couldn’t follow him home, not that she even felt like doing that. Her boldness would only take her so far, and right now, it wasn’t going to take her that far.

 

Ever since she had gotten home, Arya hadn’t left the house for anything. Not yet, anyway. She was comfortable at home. She felt safe here, and she hadn’t wanted to leave it just yet, and certainly not to follow some strange man home for taking something that didn’t belong to him. She didn’t know his reasons for it, or what he planned to do with it, or why he even wanted it in the first place.

 

All of the hot air escaped her, and Arya’s shoulders slumped as the fight went out of her. She conceded to give up because there was nothing further she could do. She wouldn’t forget it, though. Arya knew his name, and she knew his face. For now, that would have to do.

 

She pushed herself back to her feet, turning around to grab her door and pull it shut again. Arya didn’t want to leave it open for the night. She closed it, twisted the lock, and walked back over to her bed almost in a daze. Gendry didn’t follow her at first, but once she began to pull back the sheets, she heard him get up from the floor and walk over to her.

 

“Are you mad at me?” Gendry asked quietly, and Arya stopped pulling back the sheets to answer him.

 

“Yes,” she said in complete honesty.

 

Gendry was silent for a few seconds. “Can I still lie down with you, or do I have to go downstairs?”

 

Arya recalled the body on the couch and sighed in frustration. She couldn’t send him downstairs. There was nowhere for him to sleep. He could always go home, but despite him ruining her chance at stopping Petyr, Arya didn’t want Gendry to go home and leave her all alone tonight.

 

“You can lie down with me,” she finally answered, crawling into the bed.

 

Once she was snuggled in place, Gendry joined her under the covers and pulled them up over them both. He returned to the same position as before, curled up against her back with his arm around her middle.

 

“I’m sorry,” he murmured against her neck.

 

“You ought to be,” Arya whispered.

 

“I am,” Gendry said.

 

“Good.”

 

They fell into silence after that, and soon, Arya realized just how tired she was. Despite her thoughts, she just couldn’t stay awake. But the last thought on her mind before she drifted off was of her sister, Sansa.

 

 _I wonder where she is_ , Arya thought, before she fell into a deep state of sleep.

 

 


	87. A Long Blinding End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Notes:** I apologize for the long delay in this chapter! It’s been insane at work, and I’ve also been a little sick. This chapter was being a pain, too. I wrote it once from Sandor’s POV, then I wrote it once from Sansa’s POV, and then I completely wrote a fresh version of Sandor’s POV separate from the original. It's very short, but not much was meant to happen in it, and I think I was unhappy with its shortness, but to hell with it. I’ve had short chapters before, and it’s been a while since I’ve allowed myself to have them again. ;-)

_* * *_

 

In his fury Sandor kicked the door shut with more force than normal, causing it to slam behind him. He threw his keys without looking to see where they would fall. They missed the kitchen counter, colliding with the wall instead, and landed somewhere on the floor to his right. Sandor shucked off his jacket, throwing that as well. It landed on his couch as he strode into the kitchen. As drunk as he was, he shouldn’t have been grabbing for another bottle of liquor. It was a miracle he had gotten home alive and in one piece while behind the wheel in his condition. Sandor had torn through the mostly empty streets of Kingsland from Winterfell Avenue to the corner of his apartment complex, and not even once had he passed by a single police car on the way.

 

By now, the alcohol had lost its flavor. He drank it for the effect, not for the taste. His head swam with more of the beverage, though, and Sandor didn’t remember putting down the bottle, but he did somewhere along the way. Pressing both of his hands to the edge of the counter, Sandor leaned over it as he closed his eyes.

 

When he opened his eyes again, his vision was still blurry. His apartment was still dark. He hadn’t turned on a single light since he had returned home, but the curtain to one of the windows was wide open, pouring in a sliver of moonlight to cast an idyllic glow around the dark edges in the room. Sandor lived on one of the higher floors, so half the time he kept his curtains open and didn’t bother to shut them or the blinds. There was nothing to see, and no one to witness it.

 

Shoving himself off of the counter, Sandor walked off towards the hallway. He relieved himself in the bathroom just as a knock echoed at the front door. Once he had dried his hands off on the towel, he slowly peered out of the bathroom threshold down the hall. Especially in his muddled state of mind, he wondered who would be knocking on his front door at this hour. His suspicions landed on no names in particular, so he strode out of the bathroom, down the hall, and up to the door of his apartment.

 

Sandor yanked it open without looking through the peephole, and it startled him to see Sansa standing on the other side of it. She was bundled up in a winter coat with a pink flush to her cheeks while her brother, Jon, stood behind her with a grim look on his face. Jon eyed him distrustfully as Sansa looked up at him with big eyes and parted lips, breathing through her mouth.

 

“Can I come in?” she asked after a moment of silence.

 

Sandor stepped aside, looking away from her as he let go of the door. He found himself stepping away from both of them and walking over to his couch, where he sat down as he heard the front door shut in the background haze of his mind. Sandor glanced up to see Jon inside of his apartment, leaning against the closed front door. Sansa was walking slowly towards him and the couch, and she took a seat beside him with careful, deliberate motions. It was almost as if Sansa feared startling him. Sandor snorted as he ran a hand over his face.

 

“What happened?” Sansa asked further, and this time her voice was quieter. She leaned towards Sandor on the couch, and he felt the cushion between them sink with her weight.

 

“What do you mean ‘what happened?’” Sandor threw back angrily, turning his head halfway to look at her. It was still dark in his apartment. No one had turned on a light, and so Jon slunk in the darkness by the door as Sansa looked like a shadow next to him, though her hair was highlighted with a faint glow from the window across the room.

 

“At the party,” Sansa snapped, finding a stronger voice. “Why did you throw a man into a table?”

 

“Because _he’s_ the reason your sister was kidnapped!” Sandor growled, shoving himself up from the couch. He didn’t notice how Jon stood to attention, taut as a bowstring at Sandor’s erratic behavior. Sandor gestured at nothing in particular in the air beside himself and continued on his verbal rampage. “Have you been watching the news? He was Ramsay Bolton’s lawyer! It’s his fault that prick was on the streets! His fault she got kidnapped!”

 

 _My fault_ , his thoughts echoed back at him, _because I agreed to the job_.

 

Sandor was pacing beside the couch now. He couldn’t stop moving. He couldn’t sit still, and he couldn’t turn off his thoughts either. They ran in the background like grinding gears, setting off sparks with each turn.

 

When he finally did settle his feet in one spot, Sandor noticed that Sansa’s mouth had fallen open again as a look of dumbfounded shock appeared in her eyes. She breathed deeply for a moment, her hand clutching at the zipper seam of her coat near her neck. Sansa turned her gaze away from him, looking down at her lap as she shook her head.

 

“They must have known,” Sansa said with uncertainty, tugging at her coat with her fingers, “or they wouldn’t have invited him over—”

 

“I doubt they give two shits—”

 

Sansa raised her eyes, which held a fiery quality despite their blue, and narrowed them at Sandor. “Don’t _say_ that!” she said, pushing herself up from the couch to stand at once. “You don’t _know_ my parents well enough to say that about them!”

 

Sandor huffed out a dry, scratchy laugh. “I know them well enough to say plenty about them—”

 

It happened so fast. One moment, Sansa was a few feet away, glaring daggers at him, and the next moment, she strode across the short distance, raised her hand, and slapped him hard across the face.

 

The sound resonated within his ears. His face was turned to the side, eyes cast away from Sansa. He barely felt the sting of her hand. Sandor was so drunk that his finer physical senses had been dulled down to the point of hardly feeling a thing. He knew what had just happened, that Sansa had slapped him, that were he sober enough he would feel the burning imprint of her hand upon his cheek, but the sensation wasn’t there. Instead, Sandor stood very still as his mind tried to absorb what had just happened.

 

Sansa leaned in close to him, raising her hand and pointing her finger upward at his face. Her eyes glistened in the faded glow of light from the window, and her expression was tight and unhappy. “You don’t talk about my parents like that,” she said quietly, her voice trembling in its attempt to stay calm.

 

Then, she turned away from him.

 

Sandor didn’t know what possessed him. It all happened so fast. He grabbed her wrist as Sansa went to lower it while turning away from him, and he pulled her back to him. The force he used was too much, though, and Sansa fell against him. Sandor used both of his arms to catch her, steadying her in place, but she shoved at his chest with her free hand in an attempt to escape from his grasp. “Let go of me!” Sansa hollered, tugging away from him.

 

“Let go of my _sister_ ,” Jon’s voice ordered suddenly from Sandor’s left side, and a stronger pair of hands latched onto Sandor, pulling at him.

 

Sandor let go of Sansa, but only to turn his attention onto Jon.

 

From there, everything went downhill.

 

Jon’s pull became a forceful shove, and Sandor responded as quickly as his body would allow him, which was quick enough. He grabbed at Jon’s coat and shoved at the boy, sending Jon flying, but Jon managed to gain control of his feet again and steady himself. He charged at Sandor, who was twice his size and drunk. It wasn’t the smartest move in the world, but Jon didn’t seem to care anymore than Sandor cared where this next chain of events would lead them.

 

Jon charged at Sandor and knocked into him, sending them both flying over an end table beside the couch and scattering various objects across the floor. They landed on the floor together with Jon on top of Sandor. Somewhere above them, Sansa screamed and hollered at them to stop, but Jon had Sandor pinned against the floor for a brief moment, and Jon wasn’t going to let the moment get away from him. Jon raised his fist and tried to punch Sandor in the face one good time, but Sandor caught the fist before it even came down to hit him. He twisted Jon’s arm, causing the boy to scream out, and rolled them over to gain the upper hand.

 

Sandor raised his own fist, and he sent one good punch right into Jon’s pretty little face. The blow busted Jon’s lip, and Sandor raised his fist again, but a noise caused him to pause and look to his left. Sandor saw Sansa for one brief moment. He saw her face, her hands, and a dark object within them—

 

Before he knew it, the object collided with the side of his face and a blinding pain exploded upon impact. It sent Sandor to the floor beside Jon, clutching his head where it throbbed in agony. He rolled to the side, shutting his eyes tight, trying to will the pain away, but whatever she had used had been heavy and large. She had been smart enough to grab an object of enough weight to be used against a man of his size, drunk and reckless and ready to punch the life out of her older brother for no reason at all. Sandor’s head would be throbbing into the morning, and that was if he was lucky.

 

Through the pounding of his head, he heard the sounds of Sansa asking Jon if he was okay. He heard her helping Jon to his feet once more. The dull drone of the talking sounded a million miles away, even though it was right there beside him, but it wasn’t. Not anymore. They were walking towards the door. Jon’s arm was thrown around Sansa’s shoulders as she helped him towards the exit of Sandor’s apartment, and she left him on the ground with his throbbing head all alone.

 

“Sansa,” he called out, and she paused for just a moment with Jon. Looking over her shoulder and Jon’s arm, she stared at Sandor in silence at first.

 

“When you learn to stop being a brute,” she said, her voice strong but unsteady, “then you can talk to me again.”

 

She turned away from him, and Sandor wanted to say something else, but what was there to say? Sansa and Jon had the door open, and Sandor could do nothing but watch as the two of them left through it. Quietly, it closed behind them. It was almost in mockery of the scene that came before it, and then that was it. He was lying on the floor, left alone with his thoughts once more, with an agony in his head that would not stop anytime soon.

 

For the longest time, he didn’t even try to move. There was no point to it. Sandor just lay there, willing the pain to go away. If he hadn’t been drinking so much earlier on that night, then maybe things wouldn’t have ended up like this, but there was no turning back the clock. What was done was done, and the silence as well as the darkness was a testament to that. His apartment was empty once more, and every mistake glared out at him from the corners of his mind.

 

When he managed to push himself onto his feet, he stumbled down the hallway to his bedroom. Sandor collapsed onto his bed without bothering to undress or get a shower. He stared up at the ceiling for a few minutes, and then he finally closed his eyes.

 

Sandor didn’t even know if he would fall asleep, but right now, he surely didn’t want to be awake.

 

 


	88. This Ship Will Carry Us

_* * *_

 

Sansa felt a hand tugging at her shirt, and then a pat upon her shoulder, and she squeezed her eyes shut and turned away from the interruption in her sleep. It was still dark inside of her room. She could tell from behind her eyelids. No light filtered in from the window, so it must have still been very early in the morning. She just wanted the annoying hand to go away, but it tugged anew at her sleeve again. Sansa rolled over in the bed and opened her eyes to the sight of her sister, Arya, crouched beside her bed like a hundred times before. Sansa let out a sigh, slowly blinking her eyes as her head lay against her pillow.

 

“What is it, Arya?” Sansa asked in a soft voice, too tired to do much of anything but speak.

 

Arya remained crouched beside Sansa’s bed, though. She didn’t get up and try to join her, and her eyes were wild, containing a look of fear that caused Sansa to sit up in bed once she noticed it. Her covers bunched around her waist, one hand splayed upon the mattress as the other lay in her lap.

 

“Arya?” Sansa asked again with more urgency. “What’s wrong?”

 

Sansa knew that look couldn’t have meant anything good. It caused her heart to thump erratically inside of her chest with a measure of fear. Her sister would not have that look in her eyes for no reason. Arya did not easily get scared of much, and when she did, she usually tried to hide it as best as she could behind a stone face she made for the world to see. Right now, though, Arya was making no such attempts to hide anything.

 

Finally, Arya stood up from the floor. In one swift movement she sat on the bed beside Sansa, and their arms and shoulders touched as Arya leaned against her sister’s side. Sansa looked down at Arya as the bed sunk underneath her newly added weight. “I have something very important I need to tell you,” Arya said carefully, but her care wasn’t out of fear. Despite the look Sansa had seen in Arya’s eyes just a moment ago, there was calm and calculated way in which her sister spoke that sent a chill down Sansa’s spine.

 

“What is it?” Sansa asked, her voice barely a whisper on the air.

 

“Petyr,” Arya said immediately, and Sansa’s breath hitched in her throat. She had heard that name twice last night. The first time had been from her mother, introducing him to Sansa after Sandor had attacked him and thrown him into the table for a reason nobody had disclosed to her. The second time had been from Sandor after Sansa had convinced Jon to follow him home, taking him with her, to make sure Sandor got there safely. When they had arrived and seen Sandor’s car parked on the curb, Sansa had obtained the stubborn idea in her head to go up to Sandor’s apartment and talk to him.

 

She hadn’t meant for things to get out of hand the way they had done from there. Sansa had only meant to ask Sandor what had happened at the party and why he had thrown Petyr into a table. Of course, that hadn’t ended well. Sansa realized she shouldn’t have slapped him and expected him not to react, but in truth, he had scared her when he just grabbed her like that. Jon had jumped in after that, a big brother just trying to protect his little sister. Jon had been lucky Sansa had intervened. She didn’t know what Sandor might have done to Jon in his drunk and belligerent state if she hadn’t stopped it.

 

Simply, it had been a nightmare. Sansa had driven Jon to the hospital, and they didn’t leave it until late into the night. Luckily, Sandor didn’t break anything in Jon’s face. He had just split Jon’s lip and bruised him up a bit. It wasn’t anything serious.

 

 _Thanks to you_ , Jon had said last night with a wry smile as he held a ball of tissue to his bleeding lip.

 

Sansa sighed softly at the memory from just a few hours ago, and then she shook her head to rid it of her thoughts. “What about Petyr?” she asked. “I met him last night at the party. Mum introduced him. Well,” Sansa added, correcting herself, “technically, she just said his name.”

 

Arya looked up at Sansa, pursing her lips like she was sucking on a sour piece of candy. Her eyes narrowed, though not in disgust or dislike, but almost as if she was preparing herself against something.

 

“He stole your necklace,” Arya blurted out.

 

Sansa gasped in disbelief. She shot up from the bed, immediately turning around to face it. Her hands ran over the sheets in wild, frantic movements, trying to feel for the pearl necklace that Sandor had bought for her on the boulevard. The last place Sansa remembered leaving her necklace was on top of her bed, letting it slip out of her hands when she went to grab a pillow and chase Theon out of her room with it, and she never checked her bed before falling asleep on it last night.

 

Arya got up from the bed as Sansa crawled back onto it, roving over the surface to look for the necklace. When she didn’t feel it in the covers, Sansa leaned over the edge of her bed near the wall to look down there for it, but its gold chain and shiny pearls were nowhere to be seen. Eventually, Sansa got up from the bed and crouched on the floor to look around and underneath it. She grabbed at the shoes beneath her bed, pulling them out one by one and sending them flying across the room as she desperately sought for the first of only two gifts that Sandor had ever bought for her since the beginning of their relationship. It was the first thing he had ever given her, and it was gone.

 

Sansa didn’t give up in her search, though. She sprung up from the floor and ran over to her vanity to check every drawer and safekeeping box. All of it, however, was in vain. Somewhere amidst all of the noise she was making, Sansa faintly heard her sister call out her name. She kept looking, though, and looking. It had to be around here somewhere. There was no way somebody had just walked up into her room and stole the most important gift Sandor had ever _given_ to her—

 

“ _Sansa!_ ” Arya hissed, loud enough to halt Sansa in her tracks without waking up the whole house in the process.

 

The last little box fell from Sansa’s hand, where she had been holding it by the lid between her fingers. It clunked down onto the surface of her vanity, empty now that she had dumped out all of its contents to search through them. Nothing but old plastic bracelets littered the vanity, glittering faceted beads of little worth to her.

 

She stared down at them, feeling her lip tremble.

 

It was gone.

 

“I told you,” Arya whispered in an urgent voice, “he _took_ it. He came into your room while you were gone. I thought you were asleep, so I came by the door to see what the hell he meant to do coming into your room like that. And I saw him. I saw him spot it on your bed and scoop it up into his hand. Then, he pocketed it, turned around, and headed out of the house as quickly as he had come in your room.”

 

Sansa stood by her vanity. The news made her feel numb. She couldn’t grasp the reason of why some stranger who used to know her mother in the past would come into _her_ room and steal _her_ necklace. Maybe he was just a thief, looking for something to pocket before he left. In any case he walked out with the one object in her room that Sansa didn’t think she would ever lose, and in all likelihood it was on its way to being sold for a small scrap of money that wouldn’t even add up to the emotional value it held for her.

 

Crestfallen and unable to do anything over the loss of her necklace, Sansa slowly sat herself down in the chair by her vanity. She turned to look at her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was a mess that badly needed a brush, and her face was pale in the little bit of moonlight afforded to her from the window. Sansa sat in silence for a long while, choosing not to speak, while Arya waited in the background for her to say something. Sansa knew it was rude to be quiet after such an important revelation was made to her, but she didn’t know what to say and any words now seemed empty and ineffective, anyway. Nothing she said would bring the piece of jewelry back to her, and even if she got something to replace it, it wouldn’t be the same.

 

“Sansa,” Arya urged from somewhere behind her, “please. Say something.”

 

Sansa knew Arya was telling the truth, and she knew Arya’s fears were probably based in Sansa not believing her, so she turned around in the chair with a sigh on her lips. “I believe you,” Sansa whispered, and then she shook her head, “but it won’t bring it back. It’s gone.”

 

Arya’s taut shoulders fell with a mutual sigh, though it was heavier than Sansa’s, and her tight posture finally relaxed beneath her expelled breath. She left the side of Sansa’s bed, trotting across the room to Sansa. Arya plopped herself down on the floor and crossed her legs, wrapping her arms around her knees and linking her hands together at the fingers.

 

“I’m sorry,” Arya said. “I should’ve stopped him. I tried to, but Gendry stopped me.”

 

“It’s good he did,” Sansa answered, which earned her a surprised look from her sister. Sansa tilted her head at Arya. “I wouldn’t have wanted you getting hurt by someone over a necklace. He might have tried to attack you. It wouldn’t have been worth it.”

 

Arya was silent at this, though she cast her gaze to the side as if in realization of the truth behind Sansa’s explanation. She aimed her eyes down at the floor just a moment later. “True,” Arya finally admitted out loud, her voice soft and barely carrying the word.

 

“It’ll be all right,” Sansa said, trying to sound brighter. “I’ll get over it.”

 

“Why do you think he wanted it?” Arya asked, and she raised her eyes again to Sansa.

 

It was a strange question to Sansa if only because why he wanted it was the last thing on her mind. Normally, when people stole jewelry, they just stole it for the monetary value. She shrugged her shoulders, doubting it was anything beyond that. Sansa certainly couldn’t think of anything else. “I don’t know,” she offered in response. “I doubt it matters either.”

 

“You think he was just looking for something to steal?”

 

“Probably,” Sansa said, “and maybe he just came into my room because I was the only one who wasn’t home. I’m sure he saw me leave with Jon earlier. I hadn’t gotten back yet, so perfect opportunity.” It sounded like a reasonable explanation to Sansa when she said it out loud like that.

 

Arya seemed to accept this explanation, too. “Right,” she echoed back. “I didn’t think of that. I didn’t know where you went off to.”

 

“Sandor showed up drunk, and he threw Petyr into a table,” Sansa informed her. “Jon and I followed him home to make sure he was safe. He shouldn’t have been driving while he was drunk. It was reckless and dangerous and stupid.”

 

“Why was he drinking?” Arya asked, sounding worried all of a sudden herself.

 

“I don’t know,” Sansa answered, shaking her head. “I didn’t get a chance to ask him. I wanted to wait until he was sober again. I shouldn’t have tried to talk to him while he was drunk. That was a stupid decision, too.”

 

“Well, you care about him,” Arya offered. “You can’t help that.”

 

“I slapped him,” Sansa said quietly, “and then when he punched Jon, I hit him over the head with a board he had in his apartment to stop the fight.”

 

“Ouch,” Arya replied, though hearing news of the fight didn’t seem to faze her. “Why did he punch Jon?”

 

“Jon grabbed him.”

 

“And why did Jon grab him?” Arya asked further.

 

“Sandor grabbed me,” Sansa answered in an even softer voice.

 

“Why did Sandor grab you?”

 

Sansa sighed and rolled her eyes. “Because I slapped him,” she admitted.

 

Arya narrowed her eyes. “He didn’t try to slap you, did he?”

 

“Of course not,” Sansa said, finally feeling a little exasperated by the direction of their conversation. She raised her hand to her face, pressing it against her cheek as she closed her eyes. Taking in a deep breath, Sansa just wanted to forget about everything, crawl under the covers on her bed, and go back to sleep. She had barely slept as it was because of last night. “Let’s not talk about that now, okay? It only happened a few hours ago, and I’m still tired. I took Jon to the hospital to make sure he was all right, and he was fine. He has some bruising and a split lip, but it’s nothing big.”

 

Arya nodded her head. “Okay,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you that. I didn’t know if I could tell Mum and Dad. They think I’m having coping issues.”

 

“Are you?” Sansa asked with a gentle tone, lifting her eyes to her sister. It was a question she had been wanting to ask. She felt she already knew the answer, but it didn’t hurt to try and talk to Arya about it either.

 

“I’m fine,” Arya said.

 

It was a lie, and an obvious one to Sansa, but she would afford Arya this one lie for now. Sansa didn’t want to push her sister to admit anything she wasn’t ready to admit. If Arya needed some time and space in order to deal with things on her own, then Sansa would give it to her. Eventually, when Arya was ready to talk, she would seek out Sansa for it. Until then, it was best not to push it.

 

“Why did Sandor throw Petyr into a table?” Arya inquired softly, sounding more curious about this than she had about the fight between Jon and Sandor.

 

Sansa thought it strange, but she also realized rather quickly that the answer was not something she felt Arya ought to hear just yet. She didn’t want to remind her sister of Ramsay or the time spent in that cabin of his, so she decided to lie about the reason instead of giving the truth.

 

“Petyr said something very offensive, and Sandor overreacted because he was drunk,” Sansa told her. In that moment, though, she swore the look on Arya’s look seemed disappointed more than anything else. Arya looked away, nodding her head.

 

“Are you going back to bed?” Arya asked.

 

“I think I should,” Sansa said, rubbing her forehead. “Do you want to stay?”

 

“Sure,” Arya told her.

 

As Sansa rose from the chair, Arya pushed herself up from her seat on the floor. Sansa trudged over to her bed with her sister in tow. She pulled back the covers and crawled underneath them, settling her head comfortably against the pillow as Arya settled into bed beside her. The bed was warmer with Arya next to her, and her sister tugged the covers up to their shoulders. It encased them both in a heated shroud, which felt better than sleeping alone in this cold weather.

 

Arya’s arm snaked around Sansa, and Sansa returned the gesture, hugging her little sister underneath the sheets and blankets. They were close enough that their foreheads and noses touched each other, and Sansa felt Arya’s breath against her chin.

 

“Goodnight, Arya,” Sansa whispered, closing her eyes against the darkness.

 

“Goodnight, sissy,” Arya returned, and together, they fell asleep once more until the daylight crept in through Sansa’s window and awoke them for the day. Side by side, they trudged to the bathroom, where they brushed their teeth together in front of the mirror. Sansa went back to her room, leaving Arya in the bathroom, and ran a brush through her hair before piling it up in a bun atop her head. After that, she descended the stairs to go to the kitchen and make some breakfast for herself and Arya. There was no breakfast awaiting them downstairs, which was likely due to the long night because of the party. It was a fend-for-yourself type of morning, but Sansa didn’t mind at all. She was fairly decent cook, and Arya certainly wouldn’t complain because Arya wasn’t very good at cooking, anyway.

 

When their parents woke up shortly after them, the day became a nightmare. Ned and Cat set everyone but themselves on the housework and cleaning duties to make sure the house was spotless after last night’s Christmas party. Robb, Jon, and Theon were also no exception to the rule, even though they didn’t live there anymore. Jon had to explain his split lip and bruised face, for which he said he got hit by a drunk, though he didn’t say anything about Sandor. Sansa was glad for it, too, because she didn’t want Sandor getting into anymore trouble with her parents than he was already in for his display last night at their house with Petyr. When Sansa got the chance during their cleaning spree, she pulled Jon aside by the staircase.

 

“Thank you,” she said quietly, glancing around to make sure Ned and Cat were not anywhere near them, “for keeping silent about it being Sandor’s fault. I don’t think Mum or Dad would be very forgiving to know he punched you, too.”

 

Jon raised his brow, aiming a wry smile at her. “No problem,” he said. “I don’t think it’s any of their business.”

 

Sansa smiled back and leaned in to give Jon a quick peck on the cheek. After that, they returned to their cleaning duties. The house was a mess from last night. The floors were strewn with trash and fallen wreaths and ripped tinsel everywhere. It took three whole days to clean it all up, especially because the boys kept going outside to take breaks. They kept heading out to the backyard to mess around with talking and throwing a basketball at each other. Arya took to joining them, and Sansa thought about yelling at them to get back inside and finish cleaning, but instead she ended up joining them as well.

 

After their last round of cleaning, all seven of them walked out into the backyard together. Robb, Theon, and Jon all sprawled themselves at the benches and table, while Bran and Rickon sat down on the grass. Arya went over to sit beside Jon and Robb, while Sansa sat on the ground halfway between Rickon and Robb. It was a crisp day, and the air looked like fog when it escaped from their mouths. Rickon was fascinated by it, and he kept breathing out hot air and trying to touch it as he laughed. Bran shoved at Rickon’s shoulders teasingly, and Robb fished out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket as well as a lighter.

 

Sansa opened her mouth to say something about it, but Theon and Jon both held their hands out for a cigarette. Robb passed one to each of them, and he paused all of a sudden when he noticed Arya was holding out her hand, too.

 

Jon looked down at Arya before he shook his head. “No,” he said, “you’re too young to be smoking.”

 

Robb gave Jon a look. In defiance of Jon’s statement, he pulled out a cigarette and handed it to Arya. Arya took it quickly before Jon could snatch it away.

 

“Come now, Jon,” Robb threw back at him. “She’s old enough to smoke. It’s not like it’s going to kill her.”

 

“It will in the long run,” Jon snapped.

 

Robb raised his eyebrows, cupping his hand around his lighter as he lifted it to the tip of his cigarette. “Oh, what are you doing smoking, then?”

 

Theon laughed loudly. “Ah, he’s got you there, Jon.”

 

“Shut up,” Jon told Theon, narrowing his eyes at him, and he leaned over the table to let Robb light his cigarette. Robb lit it, and then Theon leaned in for Robb to light his, too. Arya came in last, a little more hesitant than the boys had been, but Robb leaned forward with the lighter, flicked the switch on it to ignite a little flame, and lit hers as well.

 

Everyone at the table had a cigarette. The only ones who didn’t have cigarettes and who weren’t smoking were Rickon, Bran, and Sansa. Bran and Rickon were too young, and Sansa just wasn’t interested in it. Neither of the boys offered her a cigarette, even though she was old enough to smoke one. They probably knew she wasn’t interested.

 

“So, Jon,” Robb said casually, “are you going to the New Year’s Bash at Maegor’s Holdfast this year?”

 

“I don’t really do parties,” Jon answered him.

 

“Oh, you should go,” Theon urged. “It’s the best party in Kingsland, and it’s in three days! No one, and I mean _no one_ , throws a party like Maegor’s Holdfast.”

 

“Can I go?” Arya asked, looking mildly excited for something for the first time in a while.

 

“Well,” Theon said, “it’s all ages allowed. They do it every year. It attracts a huge crowd. They just stamp your hand if you’re under the drinking age, and they hold onto your ID until you leave. They charge a door entry fee, but that’s about it aside from the drinks.”

 

“I thought they had an age limit even for the New Year’s Bash,” Sansa threw in, wrapping her arms around her knees. She didn’t know all ages were allowed for that event, or she might have tried to go in the past.

 

Theon looked thoughtful for a moment, and then he shook his head. Robb and Jon were shaking their heads, too, as if in agreement. “Nah, I don’t think so,” Theon added. “I’m pretty sure they don’t give a flying fuck _who_ walks in the door that night as long as they’ve got your ID.”

 

Bran wrinkled his nose. “They only do it once a year?” he asked.

 

“Do what?” Robb countered, looking over his shoulder at Bran.

 

“Let anyone in,” Bran said.

 

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Robb said, raising his brow as he started to laugh heartily. “You’re not going, Bran.”

 

Bran scowled at his older brother. “And why not?” he asked. “You just said they let anyone in that night.”

 

“ _You’re_ too young,” Theon pointed out.

 

“I’m _thirteen_ ,” Bran snapped.

 

“Exactly,” Robb said, “you’re a baby.”

 

All at once, Robb, Theon, and Jon burst into laughter at the table. Bran threw the basketball at them, but it luckily missed everyone’s heads by a few inches and landed in the middle of the table, bouncing up and off the edge near Jon.

 

“Hey!” Jon exclaimed.

 

“Watch it, baby brother,” Robb warned Bran, turning around on the bench. “You don’t want me getting Mum and Dad out here on you.”

 

Bran lifted up his chin, unperturbed by Robb’s warning. “And I’ll tell Mum and Dad you let Arya smoke,” Bran returned without missing a beat.

 

Robb paused, blinking at Bran, before turning back around in his seat and taking another puff of his cigarette. “You win this round, baby brother,” he said slowly. To that announcement, Jon and Theon burst into hysterical laughter once more. Jon slapped his hand down on the table, and Theon doubled over himself as he laughed out every ounce of air in his lungs until he could barely breathe. Robb calmly smoked his cigarette as the smallest of smirks danced across his face.

 

When they were all done hanging out in the backyard, Sansa trudged back inside the house. She walked upstairs to her room, closing the door behind herself. Her phone was laying on her vanity, so she went over to it, picked it up, and swiped her thumb over the screen to unlock it. Once again, for the third day in a row, she had no missed calls, voicemails, or messages from Sandor. On the first day after the party, she expected it. He probably needed some time alone. On the second day that followed, she thought the same thing yet again. By today, though, Sansa had expected to hear from him. It wasn’t like Sandor to say nothing at all.

 

Selecting his number from her list of contacts, she dialed it and lifted the phone to her ear. It rang a few times, but it wasn’t long before Sandor picked up.

 

“Hello?” he asked through the line, but his response was slow. Sandor must have taken the time to check the number before answering it.

 

He knew it was her.

 

“Hi,” Sansa replied softly, not wanting to raise her voice after their last encounter over Christmas. There had been enough of that already. She wanted things to be calm this time, and so she kept her voice as gentle as possible.

 

Sandor was silent on the other end.

 

Sansa swallowed past the nervous lump building up in her throat. After all this time, it wasn’t fair that he could still make her nervous. “I wanted to check on you,” she admitted. “I haven’t heard from you in days.”

 

“I didn’t think you wanted to hear from me,” he said honestly.

 

It hurt to hear him say that. As upset as she had been that night in his apartment, Sansa couldn’t take a switch and turn off her feelings for him. It didn’t work that way. Perhaps it would have been nice, especially if she didn’t want to deal with the aftermath like this. Life wasn’t like a song, though, and she couldn’t hit the pause button when she didn’t want to listen to it anymore.

 

“Of course, I want to hear from you,” Sansa told him. She was unable to hide the emotions from her voice. They came through clearly in her tone. “I have been worried sick about you. You’ve been drinking again, and I don’t know what to do to help you—”

 

“That’s my problem,” Sandor said plainly. “Not yours.”

 

“No,” Sansa disagreed. “It is my problem, too. The moment you started dating me, it became my problem, too.”

 

“Then, maybe we should—”

 

“No,” Sansa said, cutting Sandor off before he could finish, “don’t say that. You don’t get to run away just because things get hard. You don’t put all this time and energy and effort into someone, and then just turn away from them whenever you feel like it. That’s not how relationships work. What little I know of them, I know that.”

 

Sandor was quiet again. Sansa almost feared he wouldn’t answer her and that he might just hang up, but then his voice came through the line lower than before. “Well,” he said, “you already know more than me.”

 

Sansa tried to think of something to say, but nothing immediately came to mind. After a few seconds of wracking her brain, she finally thought of something to say. “What happened to your sponsor?” she asked Sandor. “Elder Brother? Have you been seeing him?”

 

“He’s not in town,” Sandor responded slowly. “I’ve called him.” He paused on the other end of the line. “The voicemail picks up.”

 

Sansa found herself at another loss of words. Without his sponsor, it was hitting him hard. Sansa tried to think of what might cause Sandor to act this way, but it hit her fast like a bolt of lightning straight to her brain.

 

He had been acting strange ever since Arya had said in the hospital that Ramsay had meant to capture her and not her sister, Arya. Sandor had been taking Arya’s warnings more seriously than Sansa had previously realized. He was probably debilitated with constant worry about her being kidnapped, but why? Ramsay was dead now. Arya saw to that, but for some reason, it still bothered him. In its own way, it was terribly sweet of him to be so worried. On the other hand, it had sent him back to drinking again.

 

That was her fault. He was only drinking because he was worried about her.

 

“I have an idea,” Sansa said at last, feeling a small smile tug at the corner of her mouth as she remembered her brothers’ talk of the New Year’s party at Maegor’s Holdfast. “Maybe we’ve been a bit too serious lately. What’s happened to Arya has taken a toll on everybody, so maybe we need to get away from all of that. It could be time for us to loosen up. Instead of spending time alone, we ought to go out and spend time around other people, too. Maegor’s Holdfast is having an all ages party on the night of New Year’s Eve, and all of my brothers are going to it. My sister is going, too. I’ll know lots of people there, so it’ll be safe. What do you think? Would you like to go with me?”

 

Sandor wasn’t the partying type, and Sansa doubted he had a good view of them after what happened at the last party they went to together, but it was worth a shot to ask. She needed to think of something, and this wasn’t such a bad idea. Everything had been too serious lately, and a fun party to celebrate New Year’s Eve sounded like just the thing to take Sandor’s mind off of his worries. It wasn’t going to be anything like the Christmas party at her house or the college party on Halloween. Besides, her brothers would be there. Joffrey wouldn’t come within ten miles of that place if Sandor and her brothers were there.

 

As she mulled over her thoughts, there was a long silence on the other end of the line. Sansa imagined him slowly closing his eyes, taking in a deep breath, and covering his face with his hand as he usually might do. Sandor probably wanted to say no more than anything else in the world, but he was weighing it against something in his head if he took this long to answer her. What he was weighing it against, though, Sansa couldn’t be sure. All she knew was that this could be an opportunity for them to try something different from their usual routine. After so many months in the past of trying to hide that they knew each other, hide that they spent time together, and even hide that they _liked_ each other, they had since grown used to hiding in general.

 

They hid away from other people on most occasions. Sandor especially was more comfortable away from the crowds. It was almost as if he feared bumping into someone who knew him. They spent more time alone together than they did in public, and what few times they ventured into public, it was to a restaurant or to the beach or somewhere that people wouldn’t pay attention to them because they were too busy doing their own things. They spent more time trying to hide their relationship rather than be open about it, and maybe that in general was turning out to be toxic towards their happiness.

 

Sansa stayed on the line, though. She stayed on the phone and waited, hoping he would answer her and the answer would be positive.

 

Finally, she got her answer.

 

“If that’s what you want,” Sandor said at last, but he didn’t sound so resigned to it as to be unhappy about it. His answer brought the smallest of smiles to Sansa’s lips, and she let out a breath she didn’t even know she had been holding within her. It was good news. At least he was trying.

 

“Okay,” she said in a soft voice. “I’ll see you on the thirty-first, then?”

 

“Not sooner?” Sandor asked.

 

Sansa paused, taking a moment to consider his question. If she was honest with herself, three days apart felt good for them. Two more days wouldn’t kill them. If anything, it afforded them both a breather for a while. Sansa didn’t think of it as a bad thing either.

 

“No,” Sansa told him. “I think we ought to wait until the thirty-first. It’s only two days away, after all. Mum and Dad are still mad at you about the party, too. It’s best if you don’t come by this soon. The party is fresh on their minds. We only just finished cleaning up our family’s mess today. It took three days to get it all up.” She found herself smiling at that, even though he couldn’t see it through the phone. He could probably hear it in her voice.

 

“All right,” Sandor said, but his voice sounded more relaxed than before. “We’ll wait until the thirty-first.”

 

“Okay,” Sansa replied, and this time she felt herself smile for real. “I’ll see you then?”

 

“Sure,” Sandor told her, “you’ll see me then.”

 

With a smile still on her lips, Sansa lowered her phone and ended the call. She placed her cell phone aside on the vanity and looked towards her bedroom door. Wrapping her arms around herself and her long, thick grey cardigan, which was cozy for the weather, Sansa headed out of her room and down the staircase.

 

She wondered what her brothers and sister were up to by now.

 

 


	89. When the World Ends

_* * *_

 

Not a single star illuminated the darkness above as Sandor looked up, staring at his surroundings as he waited on Sansa to arrive. The sky was a cloudy fog with no moon in sight. The only light to fill the blackness came from the windows in the nearby buildings and the street lights that lined the sidewalks. Sandor leaned against his car with his hands stuffed into his jacket pockets as he wondered how much longer it would be before she showed up. Sansa had said she was catching a ride over to his place with Gendry and Arya. Once they arrived, Sansa had said she would switch cars and ride with Sandor, but that they could follow Gendry and Arya to Maegor’s Holdfast and show up together.

 

Sandor didn’t mind the extra company. After all, it was only Arya and Gendry, and neither one of them had a problem with him. It was the rest of Sansa’s family that had their reservations. If he was completely honest with himself, though, he wanted to avoid Maegor’s Holdfast rather than show up there on purpose. It was Renly’s nightclub, and undoubtedly, Sandor would see him at some point during the night. It was also inevitable he might run into Loras there, though that wasn’t an issue. If Loras was off-duty for tonight, he would be there for Renly, and if he was on-duty, then he would still be there for Renly, only he would be policing the crowds and the participants.

 

The only thing that drove Sandor to agree to Sansa’s suggestion for tonight was the security Renly had surrounding his place. She had been safely at home over the holidays, protected by her family, and Sandor had seen Renly’s detail outside of the Stark residence. It was far enough away to not raise suspicions, but close enough to keep an eye on the house. If Renly could do that one thing for Sandor, then maybe he could let go of some of his hate. Not all of it, though. Renly wasn’t going to get off the hook that easily, but it was a start in the right direction if he meant to get back in good with Sandor after everything. The only place safer for Sansa than her home would have been Maegor’s Holdfast, and the irony was not lost on Sandor.

 

The alcohol he had bought was still inside of his house. Sandor hadn’t thrown any of it away. While he hadn’t drunk himself into any more stupors since Christmas, Sandor had been drinking from time to time over the last few days. He limited himself on account of his medication. He knew the combination was deadly, and Sandor was many things, but he wasn’t a fool. He also didn’t have a death wish, though his reckless decision to drive the night he had gotten himself drunk could have been construed as one. Sandor couldn’t remember what possessed him to get into the car and drive that night. He had trouble remembering most of the night, though he recalled the fight between him and Jon the next day—as well as Sansa’s slap.

 

The day after Sansa’s phone call, his chest had begun hurting badly, but it hadn’t hurt him today. Tonight he felt fine, and the air was crisp and clean to breathe in. Sandor hadn’t touched the alcohol today. He knew that if Sansa smelled it on his breath, she would look at him with that hurt look in her eyes. Sansa would feel betrayed, even though he had done nothing to betray her. It was his problem, but it was affecting her, too. Sandor wondered briefly when Elder Brother would get back into town. He didn’t even know where the man had gone off to on such a short notice, but Elder Brother had a life to attend to outside of work. He wasn’t just Sandor’s sponsor and nothing else. Sandor couldn’t expect Elder Brother to always be there during every hour of every day.

 

He had to get better, and he knew that, but leaning on Elder Brother as a crutch wasn’t necessarily the best of ideas. Elder Brother was meant to help him, but if Sandor couldn’t learn to control himself when he was alone, then Elder Brother’s help essentially amounted to nothing.

 

As he waited in silence, occupied only by his thoughts, Sandor heard the noise of a car approaching from down the street. He turned his head to look, squinting as the bright headlights came into view. The car slowed down as it drew closer to his apartment building, and then it slowly came to a stop on the road in front of him as it pulled in close to the sidewalk. No other cars were around because the roads were dead tonight. Everybody was either inside, celebrating the festivities within the cozy comfort of their homes, or they were already out where they wanted to be.

 

Everyone except for them, of course.

 

The back door closest to the sidewalk opened up, and the first thing Sandor saw was a white hat. A tumble of auburn hair fell forward onto both of her shoulders as she stepped out of the vehicle, and Sandor found himself staring at the long white coat Sansa had chosen for the night. It almost reached her feet, which were adorned with silver and black sequined flats. When she stepped out all the way and shut the door behind her, she turned to look at him with a smile. Sandor had never seen her look like this before. This was new. Vaguely, she reminded him of rich, stylish ladies from the twenties. Maybe it was the coat—and the hat.

 

Sandor pushed himself off of his car, and took a few steps forward until he was within arm’s reach. Then, he held out his hand. He didn’t know what else to do, and he didn’t want to just nod at her and expect her to get into his car. He had to make an effort here, and it was the best thing he could think of for this situation.

 

Sansa’s smile grew at his gesture, and she accepted his hand. Turning her head, she called out to the vehicle behind her. “We’ll follow you there,” she said loud enough for them to hear her. Arya nodded her head on the other side of the car window, which was cracked open a few inches, and looked away as she rolled it back up. Sansa turned her head back to Sandor, and it broke his gaze away from Gendry’s car. “We should get inside,” Sansa told him, her voice lowered back down to normal. “It’s cold out here.”

 

Sandor knew she meant the car. He was quiet as he walked her to it and opened the door for her. Sansa got inside, and he closed it behind her. Walking around to the driver’s side, Sandor took a seat behind the wheel. He turned the key into the ignition, sending the engine to life and turning on the heater. He pulled off of the curb after Gendry had driven off and freed up the street for him. Following them would be easy because of the empty roads, but Sandor had to wonder how easy it would be to get a parking space at Maegor’s Holdfast. They would probably have to park down the street, and that was if they were lucky.

 

Sandor could think of nothing to say, and Sansa seemed uncertain about making the first move to talk, so they drove in silence. He rested his forearm on the arm rest between them, though, and at one point, Sansa placed her hand gently on his arm. Sandor didn’t say anything, but he bit the inside of his mouth. Though it was a small gesture, it meant something even for Sansa to just touch his arm. He had punched two of her brothers so far, caused a scene at her house, grabbed her like a brute, and yet here she was beside him. Through some grace Sandor didn’t understand, here she was.

 

“I’m sorry,” he finally said at last, breaking the silence.

 

Sansa was quiet for a moment. “Apology accepted,” she answered softly.

 

“Is it really that easy?”

 

“No,” Sansa admitted beside him. He felt the fingers she had rested on his arm curl inward, catching on his sleeve. “You’ve got to change if you want it to mean something.”

 

Sandor drew in a deep breath, feeling more injured by the words than comforted. The road curved ahead of them. Gendry’s car turned onto the curve. They were almost to Blackfyre Boulevard.

 

“Why forgive?” Sandor asked, unable to stop himself.

 

“Forgiveness is easy,” Sansa said. He turned his head briefly to look at her, but she was gazing forward through the windshield as she spoke. “The only point of not forgiving someone is to hold a grudge, and that’s bad for you. I can forgive you, Sandor, but if you want me to stay, then you’ve got to change.”

 

He turned onto the boulevard, which was packed to the corners already. Sandor didn’t even bother trying to get closer to the nightclub. He pulled up to the first opening he found near the edge of the street and parked there. At some point, Sansa had removed her hand from his arm. Sandor cut off the engine and got out of the car, shutting the door and locking it up. He came around to the other side, and Sansa wrapped her arm around his at the elbow. Sandor noticed she wasn’t wearing her hat anymore. Despite their conversation in the car and the awkward air between them because of it, they walked up to Maegor’s Holdfast together.

 

Sandor didn’t see Gendry’s car amidst the ones they passed by, and he didn’t know where those two had gone off to park. As for Blackfyre Boulevard and the establishment of Maegor’s Holdfast, both were lit up brighter than they had been the last night Sandor and Sansa had gone together. Instead of usual dark multi-tonal lights, the colors were dominated mostly by white. There were shocks and sparks of barely noticeable blues, pinks, yellows, and violets, but all of it came together to give the appearance of opalescence. Everything was white and silver. Perfect colors, considering the holiday.

 

They arrived at the entrance of the club, and Sandor let Sansa walk in first. It was warmer on the inside than the outside, but the packed crowd spoke to that. A sea of bodies swayed and jumped beneath blue and white lights. Above the dancing crowd hung an enormous mirror ball, reflecting everything back onto the crowd. Sandor looked around and wondered how Sansa would even be able to tell if her brothers were here. The music was blaring, the bass pounding right into the floor at their feet. There was strobe lighting on the bottom floor, which made it all that much harder to see.

 

He glanced down at Sansa, noticing she had shrugged off her coat and folded it over her arm. Beneath it, she was wearing a black long sleeve top and silver skirt. Sandor caught himself staring until she turned around to face him, smiling again. Sansa leaned in close, reaching up on her tiptoes. He bent over to make it easier for them to speak, and Sansa brought her lips close to his ear.

 

“Should we go and sit at the bar or go to the dance floor?” Sansa asked loudly in an attempt to speak over the roar of the music and the crowd.

 

Sandor found neither idea very appealing, though. He wasn’t going to dance. He didn’t know _how_ to dance, and on top of that, the bar seemed like the last place they wanted to be after what happened on Christmas.

 

“I have got a better idea,” Sandor told her, and he took Sansa by the arm and led her through the crowd ahead of them. He parted a way through the bodies until they reached a spiral staircase. There was a second floor on two sides of the club, which overlooked the crowd below with tall railings and a floor that extended outwards for tables and chairs. Against the wall from the open tables were rooms set aside for private parties or people looking for a more personal space to spend their time in for the night. However, these rooms, unlike the real VIP rooms, only had three walls. Facing the tables on the balcony, they were wide open. Lounge seats filled with cushions lined the inner walls, and a round table sat in the center for beverages and food.

 

Upon reaching the second floor, Sandor noticed the majority of them seemed to already be taken and filled, but there was one room in the middle that only had a few people in it. He led Sansa over to that section, and they sat down together on the side that was unoccupied. The music was just as loud up here, but at least it wasn’t crowded.

 

“I’m thirsty,” Sansa said, and he looked over at her. She was sitting down beside him very close with her arm linked around his arm.

 

“They usually have servers that come by up here,” Sandor told her. “We can wait for one.”

 

“In the mean time?” Sansa asked, raising her eyebrows. There was a small hint of a smile on her face.

 

“You tell me,” he said. “You’re the one who wanted to come here.”

 

Sansa caught the undertone of humor in his voice, and her smile grew bigger. It was good that he could at least still be capable of making her smile.

 

“You’ll have to give me a moment to think about it,” Sansa informed him as she leaned in closer, talking louder to make sure he could hear her. The current song playing hit a chorus, which deepened the bass and lifted the noise level.

 

They weren’t there for very long, however, when a figure hurried up from the crowd below and came to a halt near the edge of the open room. Sandor looked up when he noticed the figure in the corner of his vision, and he was startled to see it was Arya standing before them in a black dress. She was breathing heavily, staring at both of them like they were the odd sight.

 

“Hey, Sansa,” Arya called over to her sister. “I was looking for you. I saw you two come up the staircase. Can you come down for a minute?”

 

Sandor glanced at Sansa, and she looked up at him. “Is it all right if I leave you alone for a little bit?” Sansa asked him.

 

“Sure,” he said. There was no point in saying no. It wasn’t like he cared, anyway. They had only just gotten here, but if Sansa wanted to spend some time with her sister, it wasn’t as if that was a bad thing. “Go ahead,” Sandor told her. “I’ll be here when you get back. Just make sure she walks you back. Or Gendry. I don’t care which.”

 

Sansa grinned at him and leaned forward to give him a quick peck on the lips. She hopped up, then, and joined her sister by her side. Sandor watched as they walked off, and when he glanced back at the empty spot beside him, he noticed that Sansa had left her coat lying across the lounge sofa.

 

Sansa was gone for more than just a minute. In her absence a server came by, though. Sandor asked for a coke, pointedly ignoring the open glasses of alcohol and champagne from the group across from his side. The table between them was littered with glasses and two open bottles. He wondered once again why he had agreed to come here if this was all he was going to do: sit in a corner and sip on coke while Sansa went off somewhere with Gendry and Arya. As he stared off into nothingness, a voice from his left broke him out of his reverie.

 

“You’re the last person I’d expect to see here.”

 

Sandor looked up and spotted Brienne staring over at him with her hands on her hips and one leg at an angle. The woman was tall enough as it was, but she was also wearing high heels tonight, which only made her taller. She seemed to have the same sense of fashion as Sansa because she was wearing a dress made out of a shimmery silver material that glistened and caught on the light whenever she moved.

 

“I’m the last person I expected to be here,” Sandor replied dryly, lowering his drink to his lap. He was glad she wasn’t holding his denial of giving Jaime a job against him. It wouldn’t have been fair, and on top of that, it was ages ago. Still, her attempts at keeping in contact had been minimal since then.

 

Brienne jerked her head towards the railing. “Come over here and join me,” she said, turning around and approaching the rail. Sandor put down his glass on the table and got up from the lounge sofa. He walked up to the railing and placed his hands on the top metal bar. It was cool to the touch. Beside him, Brienne’s hands were resting on the bar as well. He looked down at the crowd. Some of them had glow sticks in their hands, waving them about carelessly. Some also had glowing bracelets or crowns on their heads, and all of them were dancing like maniacs.

 

“I haven’t heard from you in a while,” Sandor told Brienne, speaking up over the music. When he gazed at her from the corner of his vision with just a slight tilt of his head, he noticed she was smirking.

 

“That is true,” Brienne admitted, talking loudly as well. “I have to admit I was pissed when you refused to help Jaime.”

 

“I have to admit I don’t feel a thing about it.”

 

Brienne laughed beside him. It was reassuring. “So, what have you been up to?” she asked, cocking her head to the side as she glanced over at him.

 

“Life,” Sandor answered, “a.k.a. bullshit.”

 

Brienne laughed again. “That’s one way to put it.”

 

“That’s the only way to put it,” he said.

 

“Sometimes, yeah,” Brienne agreed with him, “but not all the time. Things have gotten better at work for me, so I’ve got a more positive attitude lately.”

 

“Good for you,” Sandor said, though he didn’t mean it in a bad way.

 

“Have you ever met the owner of this night club before?” Brienne asked all of a sudden. “Loras dates him, but he never talks about him. Some people say he’s an asshole, and others say he’s a party animal. I haven’t seen him tonight, though.”

 

“He’s probably around here somewhere,” Sandor replied offhandedly. “I don’t personally know him. Never met him before, but I hear about him a lot.”

 

“Everyone hears about him,” Brienne said. “I think that’s why Loras doesn’t like to talk about him.”

 

“Your partner, right?” Sandor asked, turning to look at her.

 

“Yes,” Brienne answered. “He would be my partner. I think he’s around here somewhere. I swear I saw him earlier by the door.”

 

“He might be,” Sandor told her. “It looks like everyone is here tonight.”

 

“I think all of Kingsland is here,” Brienne responded, rolling her eyes. There was a smile on her lips, though. She reached out and patted Sandor on the shoulder. “Well, you take care of yourself,” she said, “and don’t be a stranger. I need to get back to Jaime before he throws a fit.”

 

“Jaime’s here?”

 

“I asked him to wait downstairs,” Brienne informed Sandor in a lower voice as she leaned in close. “I saw you come up the stairs earlier, so I sneaked away from Jaime for a little bit to come and say hi.”

 

“Right,” Sandor said with a short nod. “You take care, too.”

 

Brienne smiled one last time at him and walked off towards the spiral staircase. Sandor glanced back down at the crowd below. All of the flashing lights were dizzying. He turned away from them, bringing his hand to the bridge of his nose and pinching it to ease the buildup of a dull ache behind his eyes. Sandor didn’t immediately go back to the sofa to sit down. He stood there a little bit longer, wondering when Sansa was going to come back.

 

Just as he was thinking it, he heard another familiar voice call out to him.

 

“Sandor!” Loras exclaimed, and Sandor turned his head to look in the direction of Loras’s voice. He saw the younger man approaching him with a lopsided grin on his face and half of his curls falling into his eyes.

 

“Don’t you ever cut your hair?” Sandor asked him.

 

Loras laughed aloud. “Only when I want to see,” he replied. When Loras calmed down his laughter, his smile faded from his face somewhat. “I saw you talking to Brienne.”

 

“Yeah, well, everyone is here tonight.”

 

“So they say,” Loras answered slyly, and he put his hand on Sandor’s back to guide him towards the lounge area away from the railing. “I think Jaime is here, too.”

 

“Downstairs most like,” Sandor said, taking a seat on the sofa. There was a still a crowd of younger people on the other side across from them, but Sandor ignored them. Loras took a seat beside him, pushing Sansa’s coat out of the way.

 

“Renly does throw the best parties,” Loras commented in an idle voice. “All sorts of people show up for them.”

 

“Is he here?”

 

“He’s here,” Loras said. “He is checking up on a few things at the moment. What about you, Sandor? Did you come with anybody special tonight? How about a certain foxy young lady with flowing red hair out of a storybook?” Loras cocked a smile at his own words.

 

Sandor wanted to roll his eyes, but he kept a straight face. “She’s downstairs.”

 

Loras looked wounded, even though it wasn’t his girlfriend. “Why isn’t she up here with you?”

 

“She’s talking with her sister,” Sandor said through his teeth.

 

Loras tutted. “You’ve got to take charge a bit more, Sandor,” Loras told him, “or she’s going to walk all over you. No one likes a doormat.”

 

“She’s only talking with her sister,” Sandor repeated, feeling his jaw clench up.

 

Loras leaned in close to the side of Sandor’s face. “And I’m only joking,” Loras revealed slowly, patting Sandor on the shoulder. He started to laugh, and that was when Sandor smelled the liquor on Loras’s breath. “Have a sense of humor, Sandor,” Loras scolded him. “Not _everything_ you hear is set in stone like the Ten Commandments.” Loras snorted. “Those _were_ set in stone, but look at how many people follow those, anyway.”

 

“Are you going to make jokes all night?”

 

“I make jokes _every_ night,” Loras said, slapping Sandor on the back. “Where’s the champagne . . . oh, yes! Here it is!” Loras reached across the table and grabbed an open bottle of it. He didn’t even bother to pour himself a glass. Loras just started drinking it right out of the bottle.

 

“Someone else paid for that, you know,” Sandor commented.

 

Loras pulled the bottle away from his mouth, raising a single eyebrow. “And my boyfriend owns this club,” he replied. “Ha _ha_.”

 

“You’re a dick sometimes.”

 

“I have a dick _all_ the time,” Loras exclaimed beside him, and it was enough to finally urge a snort out of Sandor as he shook his head. Loras was in good spirits tonight for some reason. It might have just been the alcohol, but Sandor doubted that was the only reason.

 

Suddenly, someone fell into his lap, and it was enough to startle Sandor badly.

 

He pulled back, trying to get a good look of the girl’s face, but he recognized the auburn hair before she tipped her head to the side to grin at him. Sansa’s cheeks were flushed to a deep pink, and her blue eyes were bright and cheerful. She had thrown both of her arms around his neck when she landed on his lap, and it took Sandor all of three seconds to realize Sansa was drunk off her ass.

 

He stared at her with his mouth agape. Sandor was on the verge of asking her if she had been drinking. It was on the tip of his tongue, but before he could say it, Sansa closed the space between them as she cupped the nape of his neck with a delicate touch of her hand. Her soft lips captured his mouth with a slow kiss. The noise of the club around them faded to a murmur within his ears as he kissed her back, desperate for the touch he had been deprived of so far for days and nights. Sandor slid his hand beneath her cascade of hair, grasping the back of her neck, and held her in place as his fingers gripped her tight. Sansa made a pleasurable noise deep in her throat, and Sandor parted his lips and deepened the kiss. He didn’t care that people were around them, seeing everything. He didn’t care that Loras was there. Sandor delved his tongue into Sansa’s mouth, losing himself in her warmth.

 

She placed both of her hands on either side of his neck to hold him firmly, sliding her tongue against his in the heat of their mouths. She scooted closer to him in his lap. Sansa tasted sweet and tangy at the same time, a sure sign of the alcohol she must have drunk before she returned to him. Moments ago, he was trying to piece together why she had been drinking in the first place, but now he thought only of the enticing flavor—and of wanting her. Their kiss continued, growing ever more heated with each passing second, until Sandor realized this was a bad idea.

 

Sansa was drunk. He had to stop kissing her.

 

Sandor pulled away when he remembered it, ending the kiss. Sansa stared back at him under the blue and violet lights of the open lounge room. Because of the liquor, her eyes shone with a glassy appearance. Sansa ran her tongue over her lips, and then she bit down her bottom lip with just her two front teeth. Her teeth dragged off of her lip, and she leaned in close again to kiss him once more, but Sandor turned his head away. Sansa froze an inch away from him.

 

“Is something wrong?” Sansa whispered, but she grazed her fingernails against his neck as she said it, and it caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand up.

 

“You’re drunk,” Sandor told her flatly.

 

Sansa pulled back from him at his comment, and Sandor dared to turn his head to look at her. An air of sobriety overcame her instantly, and her expression was as clear as shallow water. “I’m not _drunk_ ,” Sansa protested. “I’m tipsy. There is a difference, you know.”

 

“How much have you had?” he asked, furrowing his brow.

 

“A glass,” she said plainly.

 

“A glass?” Sandor repeated. He was skeptical of that.

 

Sansa glanced away from Sandor, taking a deep breath. “A glass and a half,” she admitted.

 

“You’re a lightweight,” he said as if that was the end of the argument. “You’re drunk.”

 

Sansa cut her eyes back to Sandor, giving him a piercing gaze. “If I was drunk, I wouldn’t be able to walk straight, speak clearly, or—”

 

“Sansa—”

 

“Don’t ‘Sansa’ me,” she snapped at him, sounding genuinely irritated at last. Her voice calmed down after that, though, taking on a more gentle quality. “Look,” Sansa told him, “I was only drinking because I was nervous. That’s all.”

 

Sandor didn’t want to irritate her further. He was already on thin ice with Sansa as it was, so he decided to entertain this line of conversation. He made a genuine effort to sound honest. “Why were you nervous?” Sandor asked her.

 

Sansa’s eyes were locked on a point between Sandor’s collarbone and chin, and her fingers began to stroke delicately at the sides of his neck. Her touch brought pleasant little tingles to the nerves beneath his skin. Sandor felt a heaviness build inside his head, overpowering his thoughts and driving him back to desire again. Her touch was so gentle, and yet it ruled him.

 

“Because I was thinking,” Sansa whispered as she placed her hands on Sandor’s shoulders, using them as leverage to reposition herself on his lap so that she was straddling him with her knees on either side of his body. Before, she had been sitting sideways in his lap. Not anymore. She leaned into him until their bodies were touching, and briefly, Sandor looked out of the corner of his eyes to see if Loras was still there.

 

He wasn’t, though.

 

Sandor glanced around the open lounge area. Loras was gone, and only the small college crowd across from them remained. Sandor turned his attention back to Sansa, wondering only briefly how Loras had snuck away from them without a sound, but the thought didn’t last. The thought didn’t last because Sansa leaned in towards his mouth and spoke near Sandor’s lips as her hands began to stroke slowly up and down the side and back of his neck.

 

“About that time,” Sansa murmured against his mouth, “when I came over and you had been the one drinking. You were playing a card game with Loras and a friend, and they left, and we went to your bedroom. You leaned in close to my ear like this, and you whispered all the things you wanted to do to me. I wasn’t ready then, but I’ve been thinking about everything you said that night . . . about your tongue—” Sansa flicked her tongue out against his lips, sending a spike of wanting deep in his belly. “Your tongue . . . between my legs . . . in me . . . tasting me . . . ”

 

Sandor couldn’t argue with Sansa, even though he didn’t remember the night in question. He remembered what happened before he had gotten drunk, and he also remembered the day after, but he didn’t remember the in between or that moment with Sansa. He was glad nothing had happened between them that night because he had woken up with no memory of anything. Sandor wanted to remember all of it whenever he finally shared those things with Sansa. He didn’t want to be so drunk that he was unable to recollect the night before when the next morning rolled around.

 

Sansa slowly slid her tongue between his lips, capturing him with yet another kiss. Sandor let himself go. He let himself feel it, and he let himself enjoy it. He held her with a gentle but firm hand against the back of her neck, returning the slow and sensual movements of her lips and tongue. He melded into her, feeling the heat of her body and wanting to feel more. As one of his hands lowered and roved over her back, the other hand slid up her leg underneath her shiny silver skirt, gripping hard at her thigh. She rolled her hips against him, moaning softly between their mouths. They must have been making a scene because the college kids across from them began to whistle and laugh raucously, cheering them on.

 

Sandor pulled away from her lips and pressed his forehead to hers. The college kids’ cheers went on in the background, but Sansa lowered her hand to Sandor’s arm, sliding it down his forearm to the hand he had under her skirt. She drew his hand closer to her, hovering less than an inch from his mouth.

 

“I want you to touch me,” she breathed against his lips, and that was it. That was Sandor’s breaking point.

 

“Stand up,” he told her, though she looked confused by his command. Sansa rose from his lap, awkwardly straightening out her skirt, as Sandor leaned over and grabbed her coat to hand it to her. She accepted her coat from his hands, but the expression on her face was pure hurt. It was almost as if Sansa thought he was sending her away. “Put your coat on,” Sandor added more gently this time, and she obliged, sliding her arms into the long white sleeves.

 

Sandor took Sansa by the arm and led her towards the spiral staircase. They took the steps one by one, making their way down to the crowd below. Sandor parted a way through the bodies for them. Once they made it outside, the freezing air hit them both hard. There was a reason he told her to put her coat on while they were still inside. There was no point in Sansa freezing to death on the walk back to the car.

 

“Where are we going?” she asked in a hurry, staying close to his side, but Sandor kept his mouth shut and didn’t answer Sansa right away. He kept walking until they drew closer to the vehicle. When it was in view, Sansa repeated her question with more firmness. “Where are we _going_?”

 

Sandor walked her right up to his car before he pushed Sansa against it, eliciting a gasp from her throat. It was swallowed up as he descended on her mouth with a hungry kiss. His hand came up behind Sansa’s head to hold her in place as he captured her lips with his, immediately deepening the kiss with his tongue. The air was freezing as it circled them, but it felt good in a way. The cold mixed with the heat of their bodies, giving their warmth ten times the intensity. Sandor ran his fingers along the side of her neck with his free hand, and he felt the shudder it brought out in Sansa. She matched Sandor’s kiss push for push, returning his intensity, her fingers digging into his clothes as she tried to clutch for purchase.

 

Pulling his mouth away from hers, Sandor finally opened his eyes to gaze at her. Her eyes were still glassy, but their blue was clear and aware. Out here in the more natural light, Sandor could see she was not trying to hide anything from him. He lifted his hand closer to her mouth, touching the middle of her bottom lip with his thumb. Slowly, Sandor dragged it downward, catching the pad of his thumb on her lip. Sansa cast her eyes downward briefly to look at it, but then she lifted her eyes back up to meet his gaze with an intent that wasn’t there before.

 

Vaguely, he felt her fingertips dig into his hips, where she had rested her hands last. Sansa pulled him closer by his jeans, tilting her head back as she gazed up at him. There was a playful spark within Sansa’s expression, one that he knew what it meant, and it reached her eyes. All he could think about as he stared down at her was taking her home. _Why are we still standing here?_ Sandor thought, realizing their stillness as they leaned against his car.

 

“Let’s go back to my place,” Sandor told her at last, his breath fogging upon the cold air. Sansa’s lips seemed to curve upward in a small smile at the corners of her mouth, and quickly, she nodded her head in agreement.

 

Sandor untangled himself from her, and he led her towards the other side of the vehicle to open the passenger door for her. Sansa disappeared within his car, and when both of her legs were inside, Sandor closed the door behind her. He came around to the other side, fishing his keys out of his pocket, and opened the driver door to get in as well. Sandor quickly pulled the door shut, slipped the key into the ignition, turned it, and cranked the engine to life.

 

As the lights of Blackfyre Boulevard filled his rearview mirror, he drove.

 

 


	90. Feet Don’t Fail Me Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** I make no apologies for the questionable content within this chapter. It’s nothing that requires a warning of any kind. Just subtle questionable content.
> 
> With that said, you may proceed.

_* * *_

 

Stepping out of the heat inside the car, Sansa clutched the fastenings of her coat tighter once she felt the frosty air sting the bare skin of her neck and cheeks. She had been sensible enough to wear flats tonight instead of high heels, and while she wasn’t as drunk as Sandor had insisted back at the club, she was a little tipsy. Sansa glanced down at her feet as she stepped carefully onto the sidewalk’s curb, and then she wrapped both of her arms around her middle. She wasn’t wearing her hat. It was left in the car. As she turned around on the heels of her feet, Sansa watched as Sandor came around the vehicle to step onto the sidewalk with her.

 

Once on the sidewalk, he paused in front of her. He gazed down at Sansa’s face, and briefly, their eyes met. A chilly breeze blew against her cheek, causing her to shiver. His expression was uncharacteristically tender as was the look in his eyes, and his hand was also gentle as he took her by the arm to escort her towards the building. Sansa followed him as she glanced up at the tall walls of the apartment complex. She experienced a moment of vertigo looking up at the looming walls of the structure. Averting her gaze, Sansa closed her eyes. It only took a moment for the feeling to pass.

 

They made it inside and took the elevator to his floor. Inside the elevator, Sansa shed the heavy coat that began to feel stifling and folded it over her arm. It was hot inside of the building, nothing like it was outside. It also might have been all in her imagination, but Sansa doubted it. The elevator stopped on his floor, and Sansa stepped out before Sandor. She strolled down the hallway to his place, her feet pausing beside the door to Sandor’s apartment. Sansa turned around to face him with a small smile on her lips as he approached her. Sandor fished his keys out of his pocket, singled one out, and used it to unlock the door.

 

He pushed the door open, giving Sansa the chance to go first. She stepped inside, finding her eyes roving over the surroundings, even though she had seen them a hundred times before. There wasn’t anything new about them, except the broken end table that was now missing and a missing piece of paneling near the floor on one of the walls. Sansa tilted her head in interest, wondering why Sandor’s wall had an opening in it. The wooden boards from the other night were all still there, leaning against the wall. She had drifted close to the couch, and so she threw her coat on the armrest and pointed at the hole in the wall.

 

“What’s that?” she asked, and she looked up at Sandor.

 

He walked towards her with slow steps, tossing his keys past her onto the couch. Sansa heard them land with a jingle behind her. Sandor’s hand came up behind her head, his fingers threading through her hair. He didn’t answer her question, but she didn’t care because he drew her up towards him as he leaned down to her, catching her lips with a kiss that made all of her thoughts flee from her head.

 

Sansa experienced a rush of light-headedness, and she swayed in his grip, but he pulled her closer as his other arm slid around her middle. Here in his apartment, everything was ten times more dangerous in the dark. There were no rules here, nobody to tell them to stop. With no lights on, it felt like they were hidden. The thoughts were encouragement for her. Though it hadn’t seemed to matter to her in the club, it seemed to have an effect on her here. Sansa became more frantic with each kiss between them as she tried to hold Sandor back. One of her hands settled on the side of Sandor’s face, and the other one touched his jaw. She felt the prickle of stubble on her palm and the soft slide of his tongue into her mouth, and the rules and the restrictions were fading away.

 

Sandor began walking backwards, pulling Sansa with him. She let him guide her into the hallway, which was darker than the rest of the apartment. Sansa thought they were going to his bedroom, but Sandor grasped her by the hips and hoisted her up onto the hall table, seating her on top of it. It was a small surface, so there wasn’t anywhere for her to go. Sandor fit easily between her legs as he pinned her to the wall with his body, his mouth crashing onto hers once more. Sansa felt her heart rate quicken, and she wrapped her arms around his neck as she parted her lips for him, eagerly returning his kisses.

 

Warmth emanated from all over his body, and she felt the heat of his bare skin as her fingers pressed to his neck. His hands roamed over her sides, down her hips, and over her legs as he deepened the kisses between them, and Sansa’s throat filled with a pleasurable moan as Sandor’s hand passed beneath her bare leg. She untangled her arms from around his neck and reached out for the top of his shirt to undo the buttons. Sandor abandoned touching her body to help her, starting at the bottom and meeting her halfway. He gingerly peeled off his outer shirt, and Sansa remembered his wound. She wondered if there was still a bandage on his chest, but she couldn’t see one through the outline of his shirt. Her hands pushed up at his undershirt from the bottom, her fingers grazing the hot skin of Sandor’s stomach. He reached down and grasped the hem of his undershirt, pulling it off over his head and letting it fall to the floor.

 

The franticness between them slowed down. Sansa stared at his chest in the little light she had available to her, reaching out and touching his skin with delicacy. The tips of her fingers traced over the expanse of his chest, and Sandor just stood there, letting Sansa explore to her heart’s content, as his hands settled themselves onto her thighs. His thumbs stroked little circles against her skin, and her nerves tingled in response. Her eyes, though, landed on the healing mark on his chest. Sandor wore no bandage anymore, and the stitches had been removed already. It was a small mark, so small, that it amazed Sansa how much worse it could have been if only the knife had gone in further or hit him at a different angle. She didn’t touch him there, knowing it was a bad idea, and Sandor’s thumbs stilled on her thighs because she had stilled her hands on his chest.

 

“Does it still hurt?” Sansa whispered, staring forward at the spot. She lifted her hand to his shoulder to stroke her hand up to his neck and back down again.

 

“Sometimes,” Sandor told her, his voice low and intoxicating. “Not now.”

 

Sansa raised her chin to look up into his eyes. Her own were filled with concern. “Will you let me know if I hurt you?”

 

Sandor looked at her funny, then, but the look faded as quickly as it had come. He nodded his head, reaching out to hold her chin with his thumb just below her lip. “Yes,” he simply said, and Sansa smiled at him. She tilted her head down, and his thumb drew closer to her lips. Sansa kissed the pad of his thumb before leaning forward to press her lips to his bare chest. She kissed a trail gently across his skin, running her fingers over his arms and down to his stomach. His hands slowly slid beneath her skirt and up her thighs. Flicking her tongue over one of his nipples, Sansa felt his nerves jump in response. She smiled and kissed him there, too, and his fingers curled beneath the sides of her panties underneath her skirt, tugging on them.

 

Realizing what he wanted, she leaned back from him and placed her back against the wall. Sandor released her panties from his grip, though, and captured her lips in another kiss, sliding his hand behind her neck. He moved it down to her chest a moment later, using both hands to pull up her blouse. However, removing it wasn’t his intention. Sandor hiked it up high enough to expose her bra, bending down to place his lips against her exposed skin. He kissed her and dragged his teeth along her skin, his hand massaging her breast through the fabric of her bra. Sansa tilted her head backwards, feeling it touch the wall, as she arched her back. Sandor reached around and unfastened its hook while Sansa quickly unhooked the straps in the front. Her bra came off easily, falling to the floor.

 

His mouth was on her breast before she could speak, his tongue encircling her nipple before his lips closed around it. Sansa wrapped her arms around his head, her fingers combing through his hair as she breathed faster through her open lips with each sensation that his tongue brought her. Sandor’s other hand cupped the breast his mouth was not attending to, the pad of his thumb grazing her nipple and circling it slowly. She tried to arch her back further, but there wasn’t much room on the hall table, and she ended up sliding her bottom closer to him. Teeth grazed her nipple, and Sansa gasped as she closed her eyes. Her hands fisted in his short hair, grabbing what little she could hold onto.

 

Sansa let go of Sandor’s hair, and then she unwrapped her arms from around his head. At the same time, Sandor pulled away from her chest and rose up to crush his lips to hers. Her thoughts temporarily fled as she held him back and kissed him, too. What was once soft and gentle had become more hurried between them as if they were on the verge of something else. She removed her hands from the sides of Sandor’s face as they kissed each other, reaching down for the fastenings on Sandor’s pants.

 

Deftly, her fingers worked to unbutton his trousers before they pulled down on his zipper when Sandor abruptly broke their kiss, pulling away from her.

 

“I can’t,” he said quickly. “ _Fuck_ , Sansa, I can’t.”

 

Sansa’s hands had immediately frozen in between their bodies, her lips parted in shock. She wasn’t sure what brought this on. All she had been doing was trying to touch him.

 

“Why?” she asked, feeling a little dumb for having to ask.

 

“I don’t have a condom.”

 

Sansa was quiet as it sunk in. She had been thinking only of touching him, not of sex, but it seemed his mind was elsewhere. Sansa nodded her head. “Okay,” she said softly. Sansa reached up to capture his lips with a slow kiss, parting her lips against his mouth. Sandor relaxed beneath the gentle touch, and he held the side of her face with his hand. His thumb glided along her cheekbone just beneath her eye, sending a tingle down through her shoulder.

 

She still wanted to touch. Her hands slowly moved once more, pushing his pants down an inch or two. She hooked her thumbs under the waistband of his boxers, using her hands to push those down a few inches beneath his pants. Sliding her hand beneath them, she grasped his length between her fingers. With his boxers lowered, she comfortably pulled him out of the confines of both his boxers and his pants. Sandor didn’t protest with her this time, letting her stroke her hand up and down along his length as he grew even harder beneath her touch.

 

His hand was upon her breast again, massaging her as she touched him. Sansa grew bolder. She wanted to experiment a little bit. Pulling her hand away from him to bring it to her mouth, she wet her palm with her tongue before returning it to him to stroke it up and down his length again. Sandor groaned aloud for the first time, and so she pulled her hand back to the end and ran her thumb over his tip in a circle. Sandor’s composure went out the window, and he caught her lips in another heated kiss as his hands slid underneath her skirt. His fingers hooked themselves in the waistband of her panties and pulled them down. Sansa let go of him long enough to use her hands as props against the table to push herself up while Sandor pulled them down her thighs. She placed herself back down on the surface, and Sandor pulled back enough to remove her panties from her legs and drop them to the floor.

 

He closed the distance between their bodies as her hand grasped his length again and his hand moved between her thighs. Sansa parted her legs further for him, a soft moan catching at the tip of her tongue as Sandor slid his fingers against her. They worked together in unison, touching and feeling and breathing harder with each movement of their hands. Their lips caught in eager kisses. His teeth caught on her bottom lip, biting down gently, and Sansa couldn’t think straight. All she could think about was her wanting. Sansa deepened the kiss between them with her tongue, gliding it against Sandor’s in his mouth, and they moaned together. Her hand stroked him quicker, and he slid a finger into her. A racked moan filled her throat, and she spread her legs even further, scooting her body towards him as her upper back pressed against the wall.

 

Leaning back, however, made Sansa’s arm stretch taut as she continued to stroke him. Sansa began to lose her rhythm as Sandor picked his up, and she rolled her head back against the wall, closing her eyes to focus on each of the sensations he was evoking in her. He leaned closer to her, pressing his forehead against hers, and Sansa felt him push in another finger. Her lips parted, a soft gasp escaped, and she let go of him to reach up and wrap both of her arms around his neck to hold him while he focused on pleasuring her. Slowly, he began to move his hand in tune with her hips, his fingers back and forth with ease. Sandor closed his lips over hers, drowning her in another deep kiss.

 

Each slide of his fingers undid her, drawing every muscle of her body tight and then loose as she shook with pleasure. He pulled back from her enough to look down between their bodies, and through the cloudy haze of her desire, it took Sansa a moment to realize Sandor was watching her—his mouth was parted, his eyes gazing down intently at her bare chest, her bouncing breasts, and the slope of her naked stomach. Sansa found herself staring at him, her own mouth falling open as she grasped for purchase on the table and the wall behind her, breathing harder, moaning louder as his fingers quickened their pace and curled inside of her.

 

Sandor raised his eyes to look at her. His gaze was so intense, looking at it alone made her shudder, a sudden convulsion passing through her as her toes seized up. Sansa kept her eyes on him, though, unwilling to look away. He only pushed harder in return, and as she watched him back, their gazes locked on each other, Sansa felt all of her body seize up tightly before it was racked with strong pulses of pleasure from reaching her peak. Her head rolled back against the wall, her eyes closing as little pulses of light flashed behind her eyelids. Sansa’s mouth fell open wider as she cried out louder than before. The ache felt so good. Her whole body was shuddering. She was on a high, and she didn’t want to come down.

 

Sansa breathed heavily, her eyes still closed. Sandor had withdrawn his hand. As she laid the side of her head against the wall, though, she felt each of his hands grasp her beneath her knees. Confused, Sansa rolled her head forward again and looked for him, but Sandor was missing. Sansa blinked, dumbfounded for one brief moment, until she looked down and saw his head between her legs where he kneeled on the floor before her—and just then, she felt his tongue slide slowly against that sweet, sensitive spot in the center.

 

With his hands grasping her beneath her knees, Sandor held her legs open wide. What began as just his tongue became his whole mouth, and Sansa went right back to gripping hard onto the ledge of the table with both her hands. She didn’t know what he was doing, but it felt like everything all at once. Every muscle in her lower body shivered in response as one of her hands instinctively reached out for his hair, running her fingers through it and over his scalp. Sandor kissed her between her legs like he was kissing her mouth, and he licked her in ways Sansa had never experienced before. He knew how to do things with his tongue that made her twist from the pleasure. She moaned aloud at every new sensation as her toes curled tight, and Sandor spread her legs further, gripping her hard, as he intensified his attention on her.

 

She cried out as she felt his tongue slip inside of her, rhythmically moving back and forth. Her nails dug into the hard edge of the hall table, her head tilting back and touching the wall. Sansa stared at the ceiling as she felt the familiar build up deep within her belly, and Sandor pulled back to tend to another sensitive spot near the top, which brought her even more pleasure than before. Sansa knew her body was drawing closer to another climax as she felt her muscles clench tightly, and he must have sensed it, too. Sandor let go of one of her knees, but Sansa easily propped it upon the table as she felt his hand move between her legs. As he tended to her with his mouth, he pushed his fingers inside of her, thrusting it in and out and applying pressure on the right spot inside of her than caused her body to throb into another climax from the ministrations of his hand, his mouth, and his tongue.

 

In the aftermath it felt as though her muscles had gone limp, sated and tired all at once. Sandor withdrew his hand from her, kissing her gently between her legs, before his other hand let go of her leg, too. Her mind was in a haze, a good haze, and Sandor stood up between her legs, leaning forward to capture her lips with a heated kiss. Whereas her energy felt gone, his was still strong, and he cupped her head as he deepened the kiss between them with his tongue. Sansa could taste herself on him, and as strange as it was, it was also sort of intoxicating. Parting her lips further, she rose to meet him with the same amount of fervor, wrapping a single arm around his neck as she did so. Sandor groaned against her mouth, a deep sound that reverberated in his throat. Sansa reached down between them with what little room he gave her as he leaned towards her, enclosing her fingers around his hardness.

 

His skin was hot and smooth but very firm, and Sansa worked her hand on him, but somehow it felt like it just wasn’t enough. Sansa wasn’t sure why she felt that way until she compared it to everything that came before it. Sandor had done a lot more for her than just that. She wondered if she should go down on him, too. She had done it before. She knew he liked it. Sansa pulled away from him, licked her lips, and swallowed past a catch in her throat. Sandor caught her lips with his again, though, pushing insistently, and she had to keep her grip by holding onto him with her one arm around his neck. His hands reached between them, fumbling with something—his pants. Sansa broke the kiss, looking down, and got a full view of his erection.

 

Her mouth fell open. A pleasurable pulse shot through her lower body, and she felt a flush creep up on her cheeks. After all they had done together so far, a flush of embarrassment swept over her for looking directly at him. She ran her tongue over her lips again. Suddenly, they had felt very dry. Sansa watched him without protest as he positioned himself between her parted thighs, and then she felt it—the graze of his tip against the slickness between her legs. Her muscles pulsed, a good ache. Sandor leaned forward again, kissing her, and she kissed him back as she cupped the back of his head. She felt it as he gently slid himself against her, up and down, making no move to go further, but her body ached for more. She wanted to know what it felt like—what it felt like to have him inside of her.

 

Sansa reached for the base of his length, curling her fingers around his hot skin. She gave a small tug, and then she positioned him right at her entrance. Her legs wrapped around his waist, and Sansa used her legs to draw him slowly closer to her. She felt the push of him into her, the resistance, and she heard the strangled noise of desire that slipped out of Sandor’s mouth. He settled both of his hands against the ledge of the table, and their foreheads touched as they both breathed heavily through their lips. Sansa wrapped her legs tighter and removed her hand as she pulled on him some more, and she felt it as his hardness pushed past the resisting barrier of her body, which hurt enough to make her grimace and hiss, but it wasn’t painful. It was more of a dull ache, the feeling of being stretched to accommodate something bigger than her. Once he got past her natural resistance, he sank in easily the rest of the way. Sansa gasped aloud this time, but it was in pleasure and not pain.

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Sandor hissed near her cheek. He had one hand on the ledge of the table, and one hand on the wall behind her. She felt full and different, and she wanted more. Wrapping both arms around his neck, Sansa lifted her mouth up to him to whisper near his lips.

 

“Fuck me,” she told him beneath her breath, not knowing where in the world the words had come from, but she knew that was what she wanted now that he was inside of her.

 

Sandor growled deep in his throat, grasping her with one hand behind her head. The sudden movement wasn’t painful, nor did it hurt her, but there was a sort of violence to his urgency that only served to excite her more. His other hand took a hold of her hip firmly, and he pulled back and thrust into her, causing Sansa to cry aloud in a mix of pleasure and shock at the sensation. Sandor leaned forward, pressing their foreheads together as he made another thrust with his hips. Sansa hadn’t imagined it would feel like _this_ , her shoulders and neck loosening as her eyes rolled back. He leaned in to kiss her with another thrust of his hips, and she tightened her hold around his neck as she cried out against Sandor’s mouth, his lips drowning out most of the sound.

 

His thrusts were slow but hard, but Sansa liked it. Sandor’s hand in her hair was gentle but firm as well, his thumb stroking softly over her ear, sending a tingle down her spine, even as the rest of his hand held her with such a tight grip. The more force he used, the more turned on she became. Sansa had never thought of herself as that kind of girl, and yet she could tell she _liked_ it that way. She wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol making her lose her inhibitions or if it was just too late to turn back now. She might as well take it as far as she could and enjoy herself in the meantime, and so Sansa found her voice amidst each strangled moan and cry of pleasure coming from her mouth long enough to make a single demand—or was it a plea? Sansa couldn’t tell.

 

“Fuck me _harder_ ,” she told him, and on one hand, it sounded like a demand, but on the other, it sounded like she was begging him. The need in her tone was so strong that it sounded like her voice had cracked as she said it, but Sandor didn’t question her. He did exactly as Sansa told him to, thrusting deeper and quicker into her until her arms held him so hard she might have thought she was hurting him if she wasn’t so busy crying out with each thrust, her nails digging into the back of his neck.

 

All of a sudden, and unexpectedly, Sandor hissed and drew back, pulling out of her. She was shocked by the sudden change, the loss of his warmth, of the touch of his body, and of the full feeling he had given her by being inside of her. All of it was gone now, leaving her bare skin abruptly feeling chill. Sansa felt a wetness on her thigh, though, and she tried to think about what had just happened, but she had no idea. It wasn’t as if she was experienced with sex, but it was entirely too short. _Why did he stop?_ Sansa thought, her expression turning pained as she wondered if it was something she did or something she—

 

His eyes were cast downward between their bodies, though, his former look of pleasure turning into a grimace and a tight jaw.

 

Without warning, Sandor slammed his fist into the wall.

 

“Fuck!” he shouted, and Sansa recoiled from both the slam of his fist and the yell from his frustration. It wasn’t as if he had been trying to hit her, and Sansa knew that. His fist was a good foot away from her head, but still, it scared the daylights out of her. Sansa was trembling from it, and she pulled her arms back to herself, wrapping them over her chest to cover her bare breasts. She tugged her shirt down, and that was when Sandor realized how bad of a move that had been for him.

 

Slowly, he dropped his hand from the wall and reached out for her, placing his hands on her arms. Sandor didn’t try to stop her from covering herself up or grab her, though. It was just a light touch of laying his hands on her. “I’m sorry,” he said, and it came out as barely a low whisper.

 

Sansa breathed in and out, trying to calm down her rapid heart rate. “You scared me,” she told him, her voice merely a whisper as well.

 

“I know,” Sandor murmured, looking straight at her. “I’m sorry.”

 

His newfound calmness made her bold again. Sansa sat up straighter, furrowing her brow as she looked at him. “What happened?” she asked. “Why did you—”

 

It was a delayed realization when it hit Sansa, and she slowly looked down at her leg. The wetness on her thigh did not belong to her. For starters, it was halfway down her thigh, a whitish clear fluid. It had felt hot at first, probably the reason why she had barely registered it, but now it was cold on her skin.

 

“Oh,” Sansa said in a soft voice.

 

Sandor laid his forehead against hers again. She could tell he was embarrassed. She ought not to have said it like that. Sandor reached up to cup both sides of her face. “It’s been a long time,” he said, trying to explain it to her, “and I . . . ” Whatever he meant to say, though, Sandor stopped himself from saying it. Sansa felt him shake his head against hers. “Never mind,” he added.

 

“What?” Sansa asked him.

 

Sandor only shook his head once more. “Never mind,” he repeated to her, and he lifted his chin to place a kiss on her lips. Sansa wanted to ask him what it was he meant to say before he cut himself off, but at the same time, she didn’t know why he stopped himself from saying it. Instead, she chose to let it go and wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him back delicately.

 

When they parted from their soft kiss, Sansa looked up into his eyes. Her fingers grazed against his cheek. She gently kissed the top of his nose, so innocent when compared to what they had been doing not too long ago in this same spot. As she pulled back from him and opened her eyes again, Sandor proposed a question.

 

“Do you want to go to my room?” he asked her. His eyes briefly cut down to the table and then back to her. Sansa glanced down at it, too. As she came to think of it, shifting to the side where she sat, a grimace came to her face. Her bottom had grown sore from sitting there on that hard surface, and she had been sitting on it for quite some time.

 

“Yeah,” Sansa agreed in a quiet voice, nodding her head. She was ready to get off of the hall table and sit or lay herself somewhere much more comfortable.

 

Sandor pulled away from her, and Sansa adjusted her skirt to cover herself again while he adjusted his pants and boxers. She made a move to hop down from the table, but Sandor slipped one of his arms underneath her legs and the other one behind her back before he lifted her up into his arms. It shocked Sansa, but it was a good surprise. She felt a small smile upon her lips as her arms went around his neck and she looked up at him, and Sandor toted her into his bedroom over the threshold of his open door. He walked her over to his bed, placing Sansa down gently on top of it. She scooted over immediately to give him space so he didn’t have to walk around to the other side, and Sandor noticed it. He huffed with a tinge of amusement in the sound before he crawled into bed next to her. When he was settled beside her, Sansa turned her head on the pillow to look over at him.

 

She stared at him, her teeth tenderly biting down on her bottom lip. Sansa drew herself closer to him, touching the curve of his jaw with the tips of her fingers, and then she leaned in to kiss him on the lips with a feather light touch. Sandor said nothing. He didn’t immediately move either. Slowly, he kissed her back, but he didn’t try to touch Sansa anywhere on her body. Disappointed in his lack of reaction, she pulled away from him.

 

There was a short silence between them for a few moments as they stared at each other once more, and Sansa wondered what exactly was on Sandor’s mind. They had just sex for the first time, even if it was a little awkward because it ended so soon, and a part of her wanted to know what he was thinking now. Sandor had certainly been embarrassed by what had just happened out there in the hall, but she also had to wonder if anything was different between them now. Something felt different, though she couldn’t put her finger on it.

 

It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, though.

 

However, despite that, Sansa wasn’t thinking about just lying there with Sandor and cuddling. She wanted to do more. She wanted to kiss him and run her hands over his chest, straddle his lap, and rock her hips into his atop of him. It had felt so good. Sansa couldn’t understand what she had been afraid of all this time. _Not pain_ , she thought, her gaze flitting over Sandor’s face as she stared at him from across the pillow. It had been something more than that, but she could hardly remember the reasons in this moment.

 

There was a dull ache of want and need building up inside of her again, and she felt a gentle pulse of desire between her legs as she slid them together above the covers. Her panties had been left somewhere on the floor of the hallway beyond the bedroom, leaving her naked beneath her skirt. Sansa wanted to satisfy the urge as it came back to her. She didn’t want to ignore it.

 

A little nervously, Sansa bit down on her lower lip and worried it beneath her teeth, and then she ran her tongue over it unconsciously. “Don’t you want to,” she began, though her voice trailed off somewhat as she tried to think of the best way to put it. Finally, it came to her. “Try again?” she finished.

 

This time when he huffed, a full smile crossed his lips as his eyes crinkled in the corners. It only lasted for a few seconds, though. Sandor sobered up shortly after, his expression becoming serious as he gazed at her across the pillow.

 

“No,” he said, surprising her, “not tonight.”

 

His answer genuinely surprised her. It was not what she expected if only because Sansa never thought he would ever say no to it. For as long as they had held off from having sex, she was shocked Sandor didn’t immediately cave and say yes to her proposal.

 

“Why not?” she asked, feeling somewhat hurt by his denial.

 

It must have been clear in her tone because the look on Sandor’s face changed in front of her. Concern overcame his expression, and he looked right at her when he spoke. “I told you,” he said, explaining himself, “I don’t have any condoms.” As if distressed by his own announcement, Sandor closed his eyes and exhaled a low breath.

 

Admittedly, Sansa had forgotten all about that.

 

The thought had never crossed her mind earlier when they had passed right over that boundary with no protection, but in the heat of the moment, it just hadn’t occurred to her. She had been so caught up in how it felt that she hadn’t stopped to think about how they should have been using a condom. It was foolish of both of them, though. Swallowing past an uneasy lump in her throat, Sansa let out a breath she had been holding.

 

Well, this time they could be responsible first.

 

Sansa reached out for his chest, and with a careful trace of her fingertips, she ran little patterns and circles across his bare skin. She felt his muscles flex beneath her touch. Despite his answer, and even despite her thoughts, Sansa still felt in wanting.

 

“Do you want to go get some?” Sansa whispered back, tilting her head into the pillow. “I could . . . take a shower . . . until you get back.”

 

Sandor stared at her, unblinking, for a while. It was almost as if he had trouble believing what he was hearing come out of her mouth. “You’re serious?” Sandor asked her at last.

 

“Yes,” Sansa answered softly.

 

Sandor tilted his head into the pillow as well, giving her a critical look. “What if you fall asleep before I get back?”

 

“I won’t,” she told him, shaking her head with a small smile upon her lips.

 

“How do I know I can trust you?”

 

Sansa laughed aloud, tipping her head back into the pillow as her chin lifted up towards the ceiling. “Really, Sandor?” she shot back with a grin.

 

“It’s an honest question,” he said, cocking an eyebrow.

 

Sansa right herself on the pillow again, staring across it at Sandor. She was trying to hold back the smile from her face, and finally, she leaned close to his mouth, capturing his lips with a soft kiss. As she pulled away from him, she opened her eyes again. A soft smile creased her lips as she gazed at him. “I promise I won’t,” Sansa swore beneath her breath.

 

The flicker of amusement faded from Sandor’s eyes, and he looked serious once again. Leaning forward, he kissed her a second time on the lips before he sat upright in bed. Sansa watched him with a grin on her face, wondering if he was really going to go out to pick some up on account of her.

 

Sandor pushed himself up from the bed and walked over to his dresser to grab a t-shirt. Sansa continued to watch with interest as he pulled it over his head, and then she pushed herself up on the bed, too, and scooted over to the edge to let her legs dangle over it. Sandor came back over to her, and Sansa lifted her chin to look up at him.

 

He bent forward, placing a gentle kiss on her lips.

 

“I’ll be right back,” Sandor said against them.

 

Sansa nodded her head with the smallest of nods that she could manage without butting her head against his given the close proximity, and then Sandor pulled away from her. She watched as he walked out of the bedroom and into the hall. Once he was out in the living room, she heard him grab his keys from off of the couch, and not long after that, she heard the front door open and close as he left the apartment.

 

Sansa sat there on the edge of the bed for some time, kicking her legs slightly as she pondered over everything that had happened since they had arrived at his apartment tonight after they had left the New Year’s party at Maegor’s Holdfast. The night hadn’t turned out the way she had expected it to. If anything, she only expected the usual of what they did whenever they were alone together. It had been much more than that, though.

 

However, it hadn’t been romantic. It had been almost needy and animalistic. It wasn’t making love to each other under the candlelight with rose petals strewn everywhere around them, though Sansa had to doubt that Sandor would ever go for that sort of thing. It didn’t seem like his cup of tea. If she was honest with herself, though, it was something she wanted one day. She wanted the romance and the sweetness and the gentle caresses and kisses. Sansa liked what they had done earlier together, but it was on a different level of enjoyment. As long as Sandor didn’t punch the wall again next time, she would love to do it again.

 

Shaking the thoughts from her head, Sansa stood up from the bed and made her way down the hallway to the bathroom. She flicked on the light switch, glancing over into the mirror at her right. Her lips and the skin surrounding them were flushed with pink and red, which was possibly from all of the kissing. Looking away from the mirror, she gingerly peeled off her clothes until they made a neat pile upon the floor. She then grabbed a hand towel and wrapped her hair up in it as an attempt to keep her hair dry while she took a shower. She didn’t want her hair getting soaked from the shower spray and end up wetting Sandor’s bed or dampening his pillows when she went to go lay back down on it.

 

Sansa stepped into the shower stall and closed the door behind herself, running the water as hot as she could bear it. It felt heavenly against her skin, and it did wonders for the aches within her muscles that she received from sitting on that hall table for so long. She only soaked in it for a few minutes, lathering her body down in soap to make sure she was clean. When she was done, she turned off the water and stepped back out, placing her feet onto the mat right outside of the door. Sansa stood on the mat as she dried off her body with a larger towel, and then she wrapped it around her body just underneath her arms, folding it under itself to keep it in place.

 

She washed her face at the sink, scrubbing off her makeup. Sansa hadn’t worn much tonight, but she didn’t want to lie back down in his bed with it still on her face. Taking the towel off of her head and letting her hair fall loose again, Sansa used that towel to pat her face dry. Raising her eyes to the foggy mirror across from her, Sansa wiped her hand over the surface to reveal a clearer reflection of her beneath it. Her skin was pink, but she looked clean and fresh.

 

She exited the bathroom, turning off the light as she walked out of it, and headed back to Sandor’s bedroom. Sansa didn’t bother with turning on a light. She didn’t need one. She made her way back to the bed and took off her towel, letting it fall to the floor. Instead of putting on her clothes again, which she had left in the bathroom, Sansa decided to crawl beneath the covers without wearing anything.

 

The sheets were cool against her bare skin, and Sansa thought it was oddly more comfortable than wearing nightclothes to bed. The fabric felt like silk against her skin, and she pulled the covers up to her chin as she nestled the side of her face against the pillow and as her eyelids fluttered back and forth between being open and wanting to close on her. Sandor would be back in a few minutes. The nearest store couldn’t have been that far away. She just had to wait for him to come back and stay awake until then.

 

Without even realizing it, though, Sansa had closed her eyes and swiftly drifted off to sleep because of it.

 

 


	91. And You Say, Stay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Notes:** For those of you who wanted a sexy interlude, this chapter took an unexpected and amusing turn. Hahaha, oops.

_* * *_

 

When Sandor returned home to his apartment, he stepped inside as quietly as possible and closed the door behind himself with a gentle push of his hand. The last thing he wanted to do was to startle Sansa by kicking it shut and making a loud noise as usual. Out of instinct, Sandor locked the front door before turning away from it to head down the hallway towards his bedroom. He had been gone for less than a half hour to go to the nearest store, but he hadn’t wanted to speed down the streets on a holiday night with policemen intently watching the roads for drunk drivers, so he had taken his time to get there.

 

The hallway was dark, and so was his room. He could tell because the door to his bedroom was left halfway open. Sandor stepped inside, glanced to the right, and saw Sansa snuggled beneath the covers on his bed. He paused all of a sudden, staring at her. She appeared to be soundly asleep, lying on her side with her head upon the pillow. Without making much noise, he walked over to the side of the bed she wasn’t occupying. Sandor put the bag on the nightstand and shed off his jacket. He dropped it to the floor, not wanting to walk all the way to the closet to hang it up. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, Sandor took off his boots, socks, the shirt he had scooped up from the floor of the hallway on his way out earlier, and his jeans. He had to stand up to remove them all the way, and those joined everything else on the floor.

 

Sandor turned around and grabbed the sheet to lift it, but he was startled by the sight of Sansa’s naked bare underneath the covers. She was naked in his bed, not wearing a single thing. She wasn’t even wearing underwear. Sandor stared at her instead of dropping it to cover her body back up. He hadn’t been expecting that. Blinking away his surprise, Sandor shook his head. He raised the sheets a little more and crawled beneath them to join her. It was warm underneath the covers, and he could feel the heat radiating off of her body. His hands were cold, though, and he was afraid of touching her with them because he knew she might wake if he laid them on her. Knowing it would make his arm chilly, he pulled it out from beneath the covers and laid his arm over her from the outside of them.

 

Sansa remained asleep next to him, and he closed his eyes as he held her from behind. Their bodies were close to one another, touching below the covers, but Sandor had no intentions of waking her up. He didn’t want to wake her just to continue from where they had left off earlier. When he had come in through the bedroom door, Sansa looked so peaceful lying there in his bed. If she had been tired enough to fall asleep, then he was going to let her stay there.

 

Minutes passed by, and his mind began to drift off. Reflexively, Sandor tightened his arm around her side, pulling her even closer. Sansa stirred from the motion as she was disturbed from her sleep, and as she slowly awoke, she stretched her body and limbs. Her back pulled away from him as it arched, which brought her lower body closer to him. Sandor opened his eyes, blinking them a few times, as Sansa pressed flush against him. She tilted her head backwards until it touched his forehead gently, and as her body relaxed from stretching, Sansa turned over in Sandor’s arms to face him on the bed.

 

She slowly blinked open her eyes to look at him as a soft smile appeared on her lips in the near darkness. The sheets had twisted between them with her turning over, bunching the fabric between their bodies.

 

“You came back,” Sansa murmured, her voice laced with a sleepy tone.

 

“Yes,” Sandor said, unable to stop the tinge of amusement from creeping into his words. “I’ve been back.”

 

Sansa’s eyes opened wider as a look of surprise bloomed in them. Her expression went from surprised to slightly wounded in just a few seconds, but her following accusation was soft and innocent.

 

“You didn’t wake me,” she said sadly.

 

Sandor couldn’t stop the chuckle from deep in his throat, which reached down to his chest with a quiet rumble. When it subsided, he looked straight at her with a more serious expression.

 

“You looked peaceful,” he murmured, his eyes trailing across her face in the dark and drinking in hear appearance. The shadows masked some of her features, but he could see her almost as clearly as if it had been daytime. There was something about Sansa’s face which was eerily familiar to Sandor. It was as if he felt he had known her for much longer than the short period of time in which they had been seeing one another. Of course, that was impossible. Sandor couldn’t explain the feeling itself or where it came from, but it was there, buried beneath everything. There were moments when he recognized it, and there were also moments when he was blissfully unaware of it.

 

Looking at her right now in the darkness, Sandor reached out with his hand to touch Sansa’s cheek and felt the softness of her skin beneath his callous fingers. Her own expression became vulnerable as he stroked his thumb over her cheek, and her emotions shone through with a telling gleam in her eyes. Sansa leaned into the touch of Sandor’s hand, her eyelids slowly drifting to a close. When she opened them again, she reached up to cup his cheek with her hand as well, and then Sansa closed the little bit of distance left between them on the pillow to kiss Sandor softly on the lips. It was a gentle and unhurried kiss, a slow slide of his lips and hers together, a small touch of tongue between their parted mouths. It was not hungry enough to devour half of their air as their kisses had been before he left the apartment earlier. The pace was different this time. It was slower and softer.

 

Something, Sandor thought, it should have been the first time.

 

He pulled away from the kiss, even though his body protested to the fact, to look Sansa in the face once more as he spoke. His hand still held her face, his fingers and palm gently cupping her cheek. “About earlier,” Sandor began, trailing off as he wondered how he was supposed to word it.

 

“What about it?” Sansa asked quietly. She must have sobered up during her nap. There was an undertone of worry to the question.

 

“I meant to,” Sandor continued in a quiet voice, finding himself oddly nervous admitting it out loud, “to make it more special for you, the first time we—”

 

Sansa’s brow creased further, her expression clouding over to where he couldn’t read it in the dark. “What do you mean?” she asked quickly, cutting him off. “Do you mean it wasn’t special?”

 

“No,” Sandor said just as quickly. “No, that’s not what I meant.” A nervous huff of air escaped his lips as a half smile gave his mouth a crooked appearance. This was a bad time for her to take something the wrong way, and he inwardly cursed at himself for his choice of words. “I meant it was your first time,” he said, “and I could have done more than that.”

 

Sansa’s face softened at his explanation, and a smile curved over her lips. “Oh,” she said in a whisper, “do you mean light a bunch of candles and spread them out, and then lay me down on the bed all nice and slow and kiss me for an hour before we did anything more? Like they do in romantic movies?”

 

He had never seen any movies like that. None that he could remember, anyway, but if that was what they did in them, then he had sorely missed the mark with Sansa. Sandor bit down hard on the inside of his cheek as he wondered just how badly he had fucked up her first time. “Something like that,” Sandor told her, not knowing what else to say.

 

Sansa bit down on her lower lip with her teeth as she gazed at him, a twinkle in her eyes. A playful look crossed over her face as she managed to shrug her free shoulder, the one she wasn’t laying on. “I didn’t have any expectations like that,” Sansa said softly. She was silent for a moment, rethinking her words. “Well, I did once,” she admitted to him. “For a long time, I think, but I don’t know. Everyone makes such a big fuss about it.”

 

She let out a nervous laugh, and her hand went down to his chest. Sansa pressed her palm gently against his bare skin right above his heart.

 

“Every time when we’re together,” Sansa murmured, “we just feel it, and we act on what we feel, and it feels so real and strong that way. When we just kiss and let ourselves go. It seems almost,” she paused, her breath hitching in her throat as she stared down at his chest. “Fake,” Sansa whispered, and she breathed out through her mouth, hot air washing over his skin between them, “to plan it all out, detail to detail.”

 

“I still should have had condoms already,” Sandor said in a quiet voice. He was not going to regret what they had done, but it had been thoughtless.

 

Sansa leaned her head towards his chest and pressed against him, her forehead, nose, and the top of her cheek touching his bare skin as she drew in close. “Yes,” she agreed, so softly he could barely hear her, “we should have had those.”

 

Sandor rested his chin above her head and atop her hair. Despite the seriousness of what he was about to say, he said it anyway because it was important. “I don’t want to fuck up your life because of one mistake, Sansa,” he said with firmness, and he found himself shaking his head. “I don’t want to do that to you. Either we have them and we use them or we don’t have sex, okay?”

 

She nodded her head against his chest. “Okay,” she murmured, trailing fingers with light motions over his skin.

 

He had promised her mother he would be responsible, and he already felt like a fuck up for one slip up. He had wanted Sansa so bad, though. Once he had stood between her legs, feeling her so intimately—he had only meant to touch, to feel, but once he was there, he wanted it all. His body overrode his mind, and he had accepted what was happening without trying to stop it again. Sansa had felt like heaven around him. He had never been with a woman without a condom before. It was too risky, and he never wanted an accidental baby or a surprise disease, so he always used them.

 

There was a difference. Sandor had felt it. It felt so much better than he had ever remembered it feeling, but then again, he wondered if the person had something to do with it. He had never felt about someone the way he felt about Sansa, and he wondered if that affected everything else as well.

 

There was a way to find out, Sandor thought as his mind veered off into a darker territory of want and desire. He trailed a single finger down Sansa’s back along her spine, dragging the sheet gently down with it. Sansa shivered in his embrace, her skin prickling with goose bumps. A soft moan echoed in her throat, and she pulled back just enough to lift her head up to look at him. Sandor leaned down and pressed his lips to hers, slower and softer than before. She tried to move her body closer to him, but there was no more space between them as they pressed together fully under the covers.

 

Sandor ran his hand up and down her back, eliciting all sorts of quiet and needy sounds from her as they kissed. He took his hand off of her back to put it beneath the sheets, and Sansa helped him to move the offending fabric out of their way. She also lifted up her leg to hook it over his hip, giving him a way to touch her. Sandor slid his fingers against her, and groaned in the back of his throat to find her still ready and wanting. She was slick and warm to the touch, and he worked his hand between her legs to each sweet sound she made for him. Sansa abruptly pulled away from him after only a few minutes, though, startling Sandor.

 

When she lay upon her back on the mattress beside him, the sheet fell from her chest and exposed her breasts to the cold air. Sandor found himself staring. They rose and fell with each heavy breath from her lungs, and her nipples grew hard. Sansa arched her back, and he looked at her face. Her head was turned upon the pillow towards him, a beckoning look within her eyes, even though she said and did nothing else to indicate what she meant for him to read in it. Sansa was coy this time, but no less up front about what she wanted. It was an innocent sort of seduction on her part, and Sandor could feel his blood running hot as he thought about having her again.

 

He turned over on the bed, and then sat up to reach for the bag he had put on the nightstand. Sandor took his time to get one of the condoms out. He wasn’t going to fumble with the box and look like a fool in the process. Once he had one in his hand, he reached under the covers and slid off his boxers, kicking them off of his feet under the covers. He also took his time to put the damn condom on properly as well. Sansa made an impatient noise behind him, reaching out, scratching her nails lightly along his lower back. Sandor turned to look at her.

 

“Please,” she said so softly. Despite her whisper, in the silence of his room, it was the loudest sound.

 

Sandor lowered himself back to the bed, drawing close enough to slide his hand behind Sansa’s head and kiss her deeply. As she was distracted by his mouth, he crawled over her and sidled himself between her legs, the covers falling down to their waists. Sandor kissed her as he propped one arm against the bed, and Sansa held her legs open apart from his body instead of wrapping them around him. It made it easier for him to reach between their bodies to guide himself to her, and his initial push was met with resistance again—just like the first time.

 

Sansa broke the kiss with a slight whimper, and Sandor paused to gaze down at her face. There was a look of pain twisting her features.

 

“Do you want me to stop?” he asked, wondering how the hell he managed such self-control with her right there like this—but the look on her face and the sound from her throat stopped him. Sandor didn’t want to hurt Sansa. That was the last thing he wanted to do with something that was supposed to feel good for her. He had never had a woman whimper in pain before. Sandor couldn’t recall if Sansa did it the first time in the hallway. Did she, and did he just not hear it?

 

Sansa was biting both of her lips close together, but she quickly shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “No, don’t stop.”

 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Sandor said.

 

“It’s going to hurt,” Sansa told him, opening her eyes to look up at him. “I’m not used to it.”

 

“Did it hurt earlier?”

 

“Yes,” she admitted softly.

 

Sandor was surprised. It hadn’t sounded like it hurt her earlier. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

 

“It doesn’t hurt like that,” Sansa explained to him, and she reached out to touch his face. “Please, don’t stop. Just be careful.”

 

He stared back at her, and it only took him a moment to convince himself to go through with it. Sandor tested her resolve by staring straight at her, a firm grip on the bed with his hand, as he pushed into her. Sansa’s mouth opened with her jaw dropping, and she breathed through her mouth as she tried to keep her eyes open with their gazes locked on one another. Sandor eased himself in, fighting to keep his eyes on her as well. She was so tight around him, but he didn’t want to break eye contact. The urge to close his eyes and focus solely on the physical was strong, almost overpowering, but he kept them open and on hers.

 

Sandor hooked his hand beneath one of her knees, raising her leg higher up for a better angle. He eased himself in as deep as he could go with the new position, and Sansa cried out all of a sudden in what was obviously pain.

 

Her cry shocked him. He withdrew almost all the way, but not completely. She had brought her hand down between their bodies, pushing it lightly against his stomach. “Too deep,” she said, grimacing. “That hurt.”

 

Lowering his forehead to hers, Sandor drew in a deep breath.

 

He didn’t understand what he was doing differently this time from the first time. Sex wasn’t supposed to be this complicated. He had never hurt a woman before by going too deep. He took in another deep breath as Sansa ran her hands over his shoulders and up to his neck. She gently slid a hand behind his neck and up into his hair, her fingers grazing his scalp. When the feeling of frustration ebbed away, Sandor pulled his forehead away from hers and looked down at her again, trying once more with a shallow thrust.

 

There was not another painful whimper, and her hands tightened in his hair and against his upper back. Sandor thought maybe she was getting used to it again, so he began a pace of slow and shallow thrusts that felt so good to him. It pulled a groan from deep within his throat, and he thrust a little deeper without going in far enough to hurt her—but her fingers, in his hair and on his back, remained locked on him with an iron grip, and it didn’t feel right. Sandor pulled back far enough to look at Sansa’s face closely in the dark. He noticed she was trying her hardest to hide the contortion of her face behind a tightly controlled expression.

 

At seeing that look on her face, there was slightly ill feeling in his stomach.

 

Sandor stopped abruptly, pulling out. For whatever reason, she wasn’t enjoying it this time, and he couldn’t keep on under those circumstances. He moved off of her body, but he felt her hand reach out and grasp his arm as if to stop him.

 

“Sandor—”

 

“This isn’t working,” he said, sounding as frustrated as he felt.

 

Despite her arm reaching out for him, Sandor made it to the bed beside her. He reached down to take off the condom, throwing it aside.

 

Sansa had withdrawn her arm from his. He felt a tug at the sheets, pulling them up higher. When he looked at Sansa again, he saw she had brought the covers up to her neck and rolled over onto her side away from him, bundling herself into a ball.

 

 _Great_ , Sandor thought. What had he done this time?

 

His frustration took a backseat, though, when he realized he hadn’t been the one in pain. Slowly, he closed his eyes.

 

His desire for sex was already gone. Sansa was shifting under the covers as if she couldn’t get comfortable, and Sandor thought he heard a sniffle. He looked down at the bed, staring at it, wondering what to say. He wasn’t any good at something like this. He didn’t have the first clue of what to do. Sansa probably didn’t want him touching her at all.

 

No, he knew that wasn’t true.

 

“Sansa,” he called out softly. He watched her for a reaction. She stopped shifting beneath the covers, growing still. “Sansa, I’m not mad at you.”

 

She was just upset, and he was an idiot if he couldn’t see that.

 

When he didn’t get a response from her, Sandor lay back down on the bed and moved closer to her. Carefully, he reached out to touch her shoulder. Sansa did not flinch away from him or react in an extreme way. She just lay there, not moving. Sandor gently ran his hand down her shoulder to her arm a few inches, and she raised her shoulder slightly, bringing it closer to her head. Finding it a good sign, Sandor drew himself close to her back, laying his arm over her middle to hug her from behind.

 

He could feel the tension in her. She was thrumming with it, every muscle drawn tight.

 

“I’m sorry,” Sansa blurted out, speaking quickly. She sounded noticeably upset. “I don’t know why it hurts. I’m just sore—”

 

“Don’t apologize,” Sandor murmured against the back of her hair. “It’s not your fault. That was a dick move of me. Literally.”

 

It felt like there was a jump in her nerves until Sandor realized the jolt came from her chest. It was silent laughter. Sansa turned around underneath his arm to face him, and there was a small smile on her face as her eyes crinkled in amusement at the corners. The smile slowly faded, though, but she didn’t look sad.

 

“I’m sorry,” Sansa whispered.

 

“I told you don’t apologize,” Sandor repeated, and he meant it.

 

“I thought you were mad.”

 

“And I told you I wasn’t,” he explained.

 

The corner of her mouth lifted only slightly in a smile. “I know,” she whispered back. “I heard you.”

 

Sandor stared at Sansa’s face across the pillow. She looked fine. Everything about her appeared to be normal. It had been an uncomfortable situation followed by a misunderstanding, nothing more than that. It had never been something he went through before, but there was a first time for everything. Hell, it was nothing she had been through before either, so at least they were in a somewhat similar boat together.

 

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said in a low voice, and he pressed his hand flat upon her back, splaying his fingers out as he held her close. She relaxed further in his embrace, too, drawing closer to him as she wound an arm around his middle and rested the side of her forehead against his chest again.

 

“I wanted to,” she whispered against his chest, “but it didn’t stop hurting. It just got worse. It didn’t do that earlier.”

 

Sandor didn’t know what to say. It had to have been because she was a virgin. It was the only explanation that made sense to him. He had been so rough with her earlier when they were on the table in the hallway. Maybe it had only felt good for her at first, but in the aftermath, Sandor had ended up hurting her because of it.

 

Next time, he would have to be gentle with her.

 

“That’s probably my fault,” he told her. His hand lifted up to her hair, and he ran his fingers through it soothingly. “I shouldn’t have been so rough with you in the hallway.”

 

“Oh,” Sansa breathed out, as if she just realized it. “That might have been it.”

 

Sandor bent his head downward to kiss Sansa atop her hair. “I’ll try to be more of a gentleman next time,” he joked with her, speaking the words close to Sansa’s hair and muffling them. It was silent for a little while between them, but it was a comfortable silence. He stroked his hand through her hair, felt her breath against his chest. Finally, Sansa spoke up.

 

“How long is it supposed to hurt?” she asked him.

 

Sandor found himself at a loss for words. He didn’t know how to answer Sansa’s question. It wasn’t like he had ever been a virgin woman before, and he couldn’t recall ever talking to a woman about it either. It wasn’t something that just came up in everyday conversation.

 

“I don’t know,” Sandor answered honestly. “I haven’t been with a virgin before.”

 

Sansa lifted her head up from his chest, looking up at him. “How do you know?”

 

Sandor raised his brow. “How do I know what?”

 

“That you’ve never been with a virgin,” she said. “You could have been, but they didn’t tell you.”

 

Sandor shook his head. “I don’t think it works like that.”

 

“Why not?” Sansa asked him. Sandor wondered if he was imagining it or if that was hurt in Sansa’s tone. Her voice trailed off at the end of her question, too. “Is there a difference?” she inquired further, but her voice dropped lower. Her hand also seemed to be pulling away from him, only her fingertips touching his chest.

 

 _Experience_ , Sandor thought, but he didn’t say that thought out loud. She would take it the wrong way, and this was _not_ the time to talk about past flings. Sandor made a face like he wasn’t sure, and then he shrugged his shoulders. “You just sort of know,” he said cryptically, and hoped she dropped it off at that.

 

Sansa was silent. She didn’t ask anymore questions, though. Sansa flattened her hand against his chest, and then she laid her head underneath his chin again. He wondered what time it was, but he didn’t feel like turning his head all the way around to look at the clock behind him. Besides, Sansa was safely snuggled up in his arms and he didn’t want to disturb her either.

 

“Do you have to go home tonight?” Sandor asked her, glancing down at the top of her head.

 

“Probably,” Sansa answered in a quiet voice, “but I don’t want to right now.”

 

“Okay,” Sandor said, and slowly, he ran his hand up and down on Sansa’s back again. “Whenever you want to,” he told her softly.

 

Though he hoped that maybe for tonight, she would just stay.

 

 


	92. Birds of Prey Circling Overhead

_* * *_

 

Outside of Renly’s office, the party went on without any interruptions. It was the night of New Year’s Eve, the most festive time of the year right after Christmas, and every year Renly always threw a spectacular party on this particular night. However, there was a lot more on his mind than just the party going on below. In fact, it was the last thing on his mind. He had his employees and two-thirds of security staff taking care of the crowd’s revelry and the drunken patrons. Renly had also informed his security to keep their eyes on the doors and to remain ever watchful as always. Despite the New Year’s Eve party, Renly was not about to let down his guard, not even for one night.

 

Oberyn, however, was making his job more difficult with each passing second. They had agreed to enter into a business arrangement together, a very profitable business arrangement for the both of them, and yet Oberyn hadn’t lived up to his end of the bargain. He had taken care of the lower level scum released on Jaime’s scandal of forged police paperwork and falsified evidence, but he had failed with one of the biggest criminals on the list and now he wasn’t doing his job properly with the other one either.

 

“What do you _mean_ ,” Renly enunciated very clearly, cocking his head to the side as his eyes gleamed with the fury of his house, “he wasn’t _there_?”

 

“It means exactly what I say it means,” Oberyn threw back at Renly with a stern voice. He stood his ground, even if it was shaky ground at best. “It means he was _not_ there. We were given the wrong time. I was informed the time was four thirty in the afternoon for his release. Me and my daughters were early just in case, and we waited for hours to see if he would come out early or late. He never came out of the prison. They lied about his release time to the public.” Oberyn raised his arm and pointed an accusing finger at Renly as if the fault lied with him. “I am surprised _you_ did not have inside information on the _true_ time.”

 

Renly gritted his teeth and slammed his fist against the desk, startling half of the occupants in his office. In a stark contrast to his sudden display of anger, he then calmly rose from the chair at his desk. Renly used both hands to straighten out his coat, brushing his fingers over his left shoulder, before raising his eyes to the man across the room. Their eyes met, burning green to cool black, and locked on one another.

 

“That was the correct time,” Renly announced. “I do not give anything but. You sorely mistake me, Martell, for someone who _is_ a fool. I may like to be thought of as one from time to time. In accordance with our enemies, underestimation reaps better benefits than overestimation, but if you think for one second that I cannot gather useful information from its proper sources, you will find yourself in much worse circumstances than now in the near future.”

 

Oberyn took two quick steps forward, and Renly’s guards stepped forward with their hands immediately upon their guns. Oberyn froze as he eyed both guards, looking from one to the other, and then he took one step back to show he did not intend to be a threat to Renly. It was the best move he could have made. Neither one of Renly’s guards backed down, though, nor did they remove the firm grip of their hands from their weapons.

 

Renly settled his gaze onto Oberyn from across the desk, folding his hands neatly in front of himself. “You have already botched one very important job,” he said. “You couldn’t even kill Ramsay Bolton on time like I asked you. A little girl had to do it, and she did it ten times more efficiently than you. Why, she stabbed the man twenty times in the back—or was it thirty? I can’t remember. With a rusted, old kitchen knife on top of that. Can you believe it? She has potential, Martell. Maybe next time I ought to hire her.”

 

Oberyn’s nostrils flared as he took the verbal beating, but he glanced over at the guards and knew there were limits to what he could do with armed men around them. Renly knew Oberyn would never try to kill him, but men of business could come to strong disagreements from time to time in matters like this, and tensions could rise and escalate into dangerous territory when tempers were up. He had been in enough of those situations before to know most men acted impetuously, but true violence was not part of their intentions. Usually, it was just a wounded ego, and Oberyn Martell had a very large ego.

 

However, to Renly’s great satisfaction, Oberyn quickly realized his situation, and he made a decision to back down and cool his head. Renly watched as Oberyn drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, his puffed out chest deflating with the motion beneath his expensive black suit. Oberyn held out his hand, palm up, and swept it in an outward arc from his body.

 

“We have come to a slight disagreement,” Oberyn observed in a cheeky manner, and he tilted his head downward to his left with a minor bowing motion towards Renly.

 

 _That we have_ , Renly thought.

 

He said nothing out loud to Oberyn, though. Instead, Renly held out his hand to the nearest person on his right. “Hand me a phone,” he ordered. His man wasted no time and hurried up to him, procuring his own cell phone out of his pocket to hand it to Renly. Just as quickly, Renly swept his thumb over the screen, opened the keypad, and dialed a familiar number by heart. He brought the phone to his ear and allowed it to ring a few times before a voice picked up on the other end.

 

“Hello?” a man answered in a gruff, suspicious voice.

 

“Tarly, old friend,” Renly said to the man, though he hardly sounded like he was talking to an old friend. The tone of his voice was flat, and when he spoke, Renly got straight to the point without becoming too flowery or overly verbose as was his usual fanfare. “I need verification on Gregor Clegane’s release time from the maximum security prison that was scheduled for today around forty thirty. Can you verify that for me?”

 

“I can verify that for you, Baratheon,” Randyll answered through the phone line. “I saw the damn log sheet myself, but you’ll have a hell of a time convincing me the signature and timestamps weren’t forgeries. He was scheduled for release at four thirty, but somebody came in much earlier than that with ties just as slick and slippery as you. They clocked his pretty face out at eight thirty that morning. Security footage picked it all up. Wherever he is, he sure as hell isn’t sitting in a cell anymore. Gregor Clegane is out on the streets already. I would have told you sooner today, but you don’t answer your damn phone anymore.”

 

Renly felt his face grow hot. This was not happening. Not to him, and not right now, and yet it was. There was nothing he could do to stop it at this point. Tywin Lannister had worked his way around Renly. The man still had connections, and it was the clear the scandal hadn’t put an end to those. The muscles in Renly’s jaw became taut with anger at the revelation from Randyll, and he tried to speak through a clenching jaw.

 

“Who clocked him out?” he managed to ask.

 

“If you have to ask that question, you’re dimmer than I thought,” Tarly quipped, knowing he could get away with it. Tarly had a smart mouth on him, and Renly had learned to let it slide all these years for his usefulness. “Tywin Lannister sent in the brigade with a nice shiny black escalade to roll Clegane out of there in style. If you ask me, he ought to have shown up himself in person. Reputation all out the window, and here he comes, swooping in to save convicts convicted of murder, manslaughter, rape, and God knows what else. He can kiss his political ties goodbye if the public gets a good whiff of this dog shit.”

 

“Thank you, Tarly,” Renly said. “That will be all.”

 

“You’re welcome, Your Majesty,” Randyll drawled out, and Renly immediately hung up the phone call without saying anything else to the man.

 

Renly glanced up, looking at all of the shadowy faces in his office, as their eyes stared back at him with expectation. In the dark and blurry illumination due to all of the black lights, it was hard to make out their expressions, though he could see some of them. Oberyn’s eyes had narrowed into suspicion as his daughters had drawn closer to him. Obara’s body had taken on an offensive stance, the look on her face the most telling out of all of the Sand Snakes. Her younger sisters were all masters of the art of lying unlike her, but Renly could read their body language as obviously as Obara’s. Their clear, young faces gave nothing away, but the sudden formation and position of their bodies as they stood beside their father spoke volumes. A sudden firmness in muscles, for instance, said they were on edge.

 

Renly also spotted it as one of Nymeria’s hands drifted closer to a small dagger at her waist. His guards had guns. She had one dagger he had let her come in with out of common courtesy. It was a stupid move if she tried to act on it, but Renly hoped Nymeria knew better than to act so rashly with him of all people. They were supposed to be allies, him, Oberyn, and his daughters, and here they were acting ready to turn on each other at a moment’s notice.

 

“It seems somebody is ahead of us both,” Renly told Oberyn, and the other man scowled even deeper with his announcement.

 

“The head of the lion presumes to release a rabid _dog_ ,” Oberyn spat.

 

“Which means we have much bigger problems surrounding us now,” Renly said, and he looked straight at Oberyn. “Get out there with your daughters without delay. Scour the streets for any signs of Gregor Clegane. The man is as tall as a mountain. You shouldn’t have any trouble _finding_ him, I hope?”

 

“What if he is being hidden somewhere by Tywin Lannister?” Nymeria cut in all of a sudden. She was quick to find a wrench to throw into Renly’s plans. He had to clench his jaw to prevent himself from snapping at her. Renly could play word games with Oberyn Martell all day long, but Martell’s daughters were a different story. He had to be more careful with them. They were like poisonous snakes he had to dance around and sing to just right unless he wanted one of them to strike him in the throat one day. “Lannister wouldn’t go through all of that trouble just to let him loose, would he?” she asked nobody in particular, but she looked about the room at everyone in presence.

 

“Unless the plan was to let him loose,” Obara said, slowly glancing at her sister, “and send him after someone.”

 

Oberyn did not argue with Renly, though. He stood up straighter before he bent forward to bow with an extravagant flourish in Renly’s direction. His daughters all the watched Oberyn’s display, falling silent because of it. When Oberyn lifted himself once more, his black eyes were alight with something foreign that Renly couldn’t identify. It almost looked like gratification, but Renly knew better than to assume such things from Oberyn Martell.

 

“We will do our duty,” Oberyn announced, his voice carrying across the room as he never took his eyes off of Renly. “As we were hired to do. Come, daughters.”

 

Renly watched as Oberyn Martell parted with his four daughters in tow. Obara, Tyene, and Sarella did not turn around to give Renly a second glance as they left his office behind the footsteps of their father, but Nymeria paused just before the doorway to cast her eyes back at Renly. Renly met her gaze unwillingly, and she stared for a long moment before tearing her eyes away and leaving his office. The door shut behind them with hardly a sound, trapping out the noise of the party that filtrated up through the open hallways to his office.

 

Renly shook the uneasy feeling from his shoulders, and then he handed the cell phone in his hands back to the man he had borrowed it from temporarily.

 

“I need Loras,” Renly said. “Bring Loras to me.”

 

“Yes, sir,” one of the guards answered him, and as Renly stepped forward to his desk to pick up his own cell phone, he heard the door to his office open and shut once more. Renly swiped his thumb over the screen of his cell phone and looked through his contacts for Sandor’s number.

 

He dialed it, bringing the phone to his ear.

 

As Renly stood there impatiently, the phone line continued to ring and ring and ring. There was no answer from the other end at first. Finally, when it picked up, Renly opened his mouth to speak, but the noticeable click on the other end of the line cut him off before he could even say anything. The click was followed by a crackling noise, and Renly heard a voicemail message play back to him.

 

“I’m not available. Leave a message,” Sandor’s recorded voice said to him.

 

Renly pulled the phone away from his ear, gritting his teeth at it. He needed for Sandor to answer the damn phone and answer it quick. This was important. It was very _fucking_ important. Renly’s hands twitched with agitation as he ended the call selected the redial button. He brought the cell phone right back to his ear and listened to it as it rang and rang all over again. There was another click, but Renly heard the answering machine message pick up a second time in row. He tried a third time after that, but when the voicemail picked up yet again, Renly threw his phone down onto his desk and hollered at his guards.

 

“Someone get me Sandor Clegane on the fucking phone _now_!” Renly shouted.

 

His demand was met immediately by several of his men scrambling with phones and handheld transceivers hanging on their belts, and one of them walked over to the door to open it as he spoke into his radio and asked the men downstairs to look for Sandor in case he was at the party.

 

“He was here earlier,” a scratchy voice answered through the transceiver. “They saw him up in one of the open VIP booths with a young woman.”

 

“Is he there now?” the guard asked.

 

“No,” the voice answered him. “He’s not there now. We’ll check around and see if he’s still here, though.”

 

“Why do you need Sandor Clegane, sir?” one of the younger guards asked him. Renly looked up from his desk. He was still standing, palms flat on the wooden surface, as he tried to settle down all of the swarming thoughts inside of his head. It was no use, though. The elder Clegane was out there somewhere, and he was not the dense monster the media made him out to be in all of the reports. Gregor Clegane was a vicious and efficient killer with no mind of mercy, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he did it.

 

The young guard who spoke was no more than twenty-five or twenty-six, but he was built like a house and he met all of the physical requirements of the job, but his brain left something to be desired most of the time. His name was Mikken, if Renly remembered correctly. He was the son of a nobody, a car mechanic, and he would probably die a nobody, too. In this line of work, life expectancy for everyone always came down to zero. It was just a matter of time.

 

Slowly, Renly slid his hands off of the desk. He made his way around the edge to the other side, walking straight up to the young guard. Renly stopped right in front of him and lifted his chin to look the boy directly in the face with hardly an inch of wiggle room between them.

 

“Because,” Renly whispered, keeping his voice low as if he was telling a secret, “Sandor Clegane is Gregor Clegane’s baby brother. Gregor Clegane tried to kill him once when they were just boys, but the job was left unfinished and Sandor is still alive. Gregor would do _anything_ to get his hands on Sandor again to finish what he started all those years ago. He said so himself before they locked him up and threw away the key. He said, ‘First thing I’ll do is kill that little pup if I ever get out of here.’”

 

Mikken looked unnerved by the story, and he swallowed, the apple in his throat bobbing up and down. “Why did he say that, sir?”

 

Renly pulled away from him, raising his eyebrows in faked shock. “Oh?” he said, and he looked around the room as if for support. “No one’s told you the story?” Renly fixed his gaze back on the young guard, forcing a smile onto his face. The smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Gregor Clegane is locked up because of his brother, Sandor Clegane,” Renly revealed to him. “If it weren’t for Sandor, Gregor would be a free man still, out on the streets, killing, raping, pillaging. Whatever is it men like him do for fun, but all of that ended when Sandor made a deal once to turn over some information he had on Gregor. Everything he said panned out, and the jurisdiction made a _very_ valuable arrest that was headed by Officer Jaime Lannister on that information. It was meant to be hush hush, but Gregor has his ways of finding out information just like the rest of us. He’s not the dimwit people say he is.”

 

Usually, they told all of the rookies that story, but Sandor hadn’t been officially working for Renly for a long time. On top of that, Mikken was somewhat fresh to the crew. Renly shouldn’t be too surprised that Mikken hadn’t heard of the story until now.

 

“Why would he turn over his brother, then?” Mikken asked, sounding confused. “I wouldn’t turn over my brother if he was a bloodthirsty maniac. I’d get as far away from him as possible.”

 

Renly looked up at the wall, staring at one of his paintings under the black lights. It was a beautiful landscape painting, an original. He had paid a pretty penny for it to hang it up on his wall. He couldn’t answer Mikken’s question. Renly didn’t know the answer to it. Sandor had his reasons, though, and maybe at least one of those reasons was related the very same ones that fueled Renly day in and day out to do the work he did without any fucking thanks from the city.

 

He did it to make it a better place, and maybe that was all the reason Sandor had needed himself to break the unholy bond between him and his brother, Gregor.

 

Renly sighed deeply and turned away from Mikken.

 

“I don’t know,” Renly said plainly, walking away from Mikken towards the exit of his office, “but you can ask him yourself if he happens to survive the night.”

 

 


	93. You Can’t Choose What Stays and What Fades Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note #1:** I do apologize in advance for this chapter. It was a very hard one for me to write.

_* * *_

 

Sansa felt safe lying in Sandor’s arms, and as his fingers trailed gently over her back, she couldn’t think of anywhere else in the world that she would rather be than right here with him. Her nerves shivered pleasurably from the touch of his familiar scratchy fingers and blunt nails as he passed them down her spine with a touch so light it tickled her a little bit. She didn’t want to go home tonight, but it wasn’t as if she had much of a choice in the matter. If Sansa didn’t return home by a certain time, her parents would raise hell out of worry. Even though she was an adult by all legal standards, her parents still treated her as though she was a little child. Their little child, of course, but Sansa didn’t expect them to grow out of the habit. They would probably treat her that way for the rest of her life, even when she was thirty years old and married with a kid or two of her own. It also didn’t help that Sansa still lived at home either. Ned and Catelyn both saw that as an opportunity to hold rules over her head. Though they let her see Sandor, it wasn’t as if they had begun letting her get away with everything. Sansa was still their daughter, and they still had rules for their daughters and sons. _More for their daughters, though,_ Sansa thought with a wry smile.

 

“What’s so amusing?” Sandor asked her with a low voice, and Sansa lifted her head quickly, startled by his sudden question. It took her a moment to realize her face had been pressed close to his chest and the corner of her mouth as well as her cheek had been touching his bare skin there. Sandor must have felt the curve of her lips and the movement of her cheek as she smiled a moment ago. It caused another smile to light up Sansa’s face, and she scooted up closer on the pillow to be closer to Sandor’s face instead of his chest. Her hand drew up higher along his back as well, feeling the strong muscles as it passed along his skin.

 

“I was just _thinking_ ,” Sansa began, settling her head comfortable upon the pillow as she chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. She wanted to share her amusing thoughts with Sandor, but she had to bite back a grin first. “About how my Mum and Dad still have all these rules for me, even though already I’m grown.”

 

Sandor narrowed his eyes at her, his lips pursing somewhat as he stared back at her. “You’re lying naked in bed with me,” Sandor declared, “and you’re thinking about your parents.”

 

Sansa’s eyes grew wide at his accusation. “I was not!” she protested, despite the fact that she very well _was_ thinking about her parents while lying naked in bed with him, and in fact, Sansa had also admitted to it out loud by sharing it with him. Still, he didn’t have to make it sound like _that_.

 

“You just _said_ it,” Sandor threw back at her.

 

“I know what I said,” Sansa told him, “but you don’t have to be mean.”

 

“I wasn’t being mean,” Sandor murmured, and his hand reached out for her face. Sansa closed her eyes to focus solely on his touch, feeling his gentle fingers as he grazed them over her cheekbone. He had been rough with her earlier, but it was partly because Sansa had encouraged the behavior rather than had asked him for something softer and more romantic, but that didn’t mean Sandor wasn’t capable of such things. Even after the awkwardness and the discomfort from their failed attempt, he still managed to be like this with her. He still managed to show how he cared for her and how her feelings mattered to him. Had he been anyone else, Sansa was not so sure she would feel this comfortable afterwards. She was lucky, though, because he wasn’t anyone else. He was Sandor, and he had always done everything in his power to be the best person that he could be to her, even in his earlier attempts to push her away. It had all been for a purpose, for the reason of trying to be good towards her.

 

Sansa hadn’t been expecting the sudden flare in her emotions. It surprised her, and her eyes opened themselves again to look at Sandor’s face in the dark. It was as if the intimacy of their acts together had put a heightened awareness onto her emotions, opening them up to her in a way she had never thought of before. Was this what sex did to people? She felt closer to Sandor, and she felt more in touch with herself as well. It was all so strange and new and exhilarating, and her veins were flooded with a euphoric sensation of pure happiness. It also made her feel a little light-headed, so she closed her eyes again and pressed her forehead to his.

 

“You weren’t?” Sansa asked, her voice barely a whisper.

 

Sandor tilted his chin up to brush his nose against hers. The gentle graze brought a tingle into her nerves again, and Sansa felt a shiver pass through her shoulders this time. “I was being funny,” he said below his breath, and Sansa burst into an unexpected grin. A giggle rose in her throat, and she pressed her lips suddenly to his as they lay there. It surprised Sandor at first, but he readily accepted the kiss and wrapped his arms more fully around her body to pull her closer to him.

 

Sansa molded her body against him, pressing herself fully to him to feel all of his warmth. Sandor’s mouth was hot and inviting, and despite lying in bed together for all of thirty or so minutes just relaxing, Sansa found herself turned on again. The second time they had tried to have sex after Sandor had gotten back from the store had been uncomfortable as well as painful for her, but Sansa couldn’t recall feeling the flare of excitement she felt the first time. She still felt somewhat sore because of it, but maybe her body just hadn’t been ready. He had done so much for her their first time out in the hallway to make sure she was ready for him, but the second time when they tried, Sansa barely remembered Sandor doing all that much for her.

 

Maybe that was it. Maybe it was just that simple. The whole reason she had felt so uncomfortable was probably because her body hadn’t been ready, and she didn’t even think about it until now. He had woken her up, and they had kissed and touched a little bit, but that was it. Maybe if they repeated a lot of what they did their first time, then she wouldn’t have trouble with it a third time. She liked this train of thought in her mind, and she felt a surge of want pool in the bottom of her belly as they kissed slowly but passionately in each other’s arms. Her body was responding to him, regardless of its complaints earlier, and it seemed as if there would be no end to her desires tonight.

 

The alcohol had all but worn off until she no longer felt its presence in her mind anymore. Sansa felt clear-headed again, and even so, nothing had changed. She thought it was sweet how he had been worried about her being drunk, but those protests had died on his lips when they had kissed back at the club, her sitting in his lap in a very unladylike manner, as they tasted each other’s tongues in front of a whole crowd of jeering drunken patrons. Sansa remembered how she had rolled her hips into his, and so she tried it again here in bed, and Sandor groaned against her mouth as they kissed. She felt his body responding her movements. Well, it didn’t take much for him to get excited, she realized, and Sansa rolled her hips into his again.

 

Sandor deepened the kiss, bringing his hand behind her head to hold her firmly in place, and she felt his hand tangle in her hair. Sansa expected him to protest once more against them being intimate, but Sandor didn’t even try. Instead, his tongue glided over hers, and she moaned softly in the back of her throat. Sansa threaded her fingers through his hair as well, tugging him closer as if it was at all possible. It was hot under the sheets, even if there was snow outside. Here in his apartment, it had begun to feel like a sweltering jungle. Sansa felt him hardening between their bodies, and it turned her on even more.

 

She pressed her hand to his chest; she was careful not to touch him anywhere on or near his scar, placing her hand in the center. Sansa gently pushed at Sandor to indicate he should lie down on his back on the bed. He followed the guide of her hand, lying himself upon his back, and she remained close to him as she moved herself to straddle his middle between her legs. Sandor pressed his hand harder down upon her back, keeping her body pressed flush to his, and Sansa deepened their kiss with her tongue sliding past his lips into the heat of his mouth as her hair fell around them in a tickling curtain.

 

Sandor didn’t seem to mind at all. His hands loosened up their grip on her, and then they began to travel down her bare body with a slow and steady pace. They passed over her back, up her sides with a light, devilish tickle from the tips of his fingers just barely grazing against her skin, and then down over the curve of her hips, and finally, over both cheeks of her bottom before he gripped them hard with his hands. Sansa jolted pleasantly with surprise at how much she liked it. It was new, but so much of it was new. Sansa hadn’t done anything like this with other people before, but he emboldened her, and she liked it.

 

When his hands stilled against her back, though, Sansa pulled away from his lips and flicked her tongue lightly against them as they lay parted beneath her. “Don’t stop touching my body like that,” she whispered to him, and Sandor took her cue and went with it. He passed his hands over her back as she leaned down to capture his lips in another kiss, and she wondered why she hadn’t thought of this earlier. If all she had to do was tell him what she wanted him to do and he’d do it, then they could have made it work. Sansa had been tired, though, and half-asleep when he came back and woke her up by accident.

 

Right now, she was anything but tired. Sansa felt wide awake and prickling with energy all over her body, and his hands felt so good against her skin. She kissed him even harder, pouring all of her emotions into it, but he never once stopped the slow glide of his palms and fingers over her naked skin, which sent up goose bumps on her flesh and tingles throughout her shoulders.

 

When she pulled back from his mouth again, Sansa opened her eyes and looked down at Sandor. She scooped up her hair into one hand and pulled it away from her neck, bringing it over to the other side and letting it fall over her shoulder to bare one side of her neck to him.

 

“Kiss me here,” she told him softly, bending her neck ever so slightly to expose it further, and Sandor reached up to pull Sansa back down to him as he placed his lips on her neck and kissed her. She hovered above him, helping to give him easy access to the sensitive skin below her jaw, and Sandor used the opportunity for his lips and mouth and tongue to spread kisses across her neck, give little licks, and nip at her softly with his teeth. When Sansa felt a small ache in her neck, she knew she couldn’t hold it up like that for much longer, so she broke the attention he was giving to her there by moving her head back. Sandor stopped attempting to kiss her, but he looked up at her in the darkness, and Sansa thought she had never seen Sandor’s face look so soft and vulnerable and open as it did right in that particular moment. In his eyes was a desire to make her happy in whatever ways she wished of him, and so she caressed the sides of his face and his cheeks and lowered her mouth to his once more for a slow but deep kiss.

 

Sansa didn’t want to leave that press of lips so soon, so she savored the moment and the warmth of his body and the feel of his hands. He had one in her hair now and one on her back, and Sansa lifted herself from the bed only a few inches from his body using her knees against the mattress. She broke the kiss long enough to whisper against his mouth, “Touch me down there.”

 

She didn’t have the greatest vocabulary when it came to sexual acts, she realized, but that hardly seemed to matter to Sandor. He didn’t seem to have a care in the world for what she called it as long as she was talking about it in that low voice against his mouth. He maneuvered his arm between their bodies, lifting up his head from the pillow to kiss her again as his hand found a comfortable position between her legs. Sansa felt his tongue slide into her mouth as his fingers slid in the natural slickness between her legs, and she moaned aloud as she spread her legs open further to give him better access.

 

Sandor touched her gently. He made sure not to be rough and to only use light touches at first until her body began to respond more strongly, demanding more of it. Sansa rocked her hips against his hand, her forearms rested on either side of his head upon the pillow as her forehead rested against his temple. Occasionally, Sansa leaned downward to kiss him, but most of the time, they lay there pressed close and breathed into each other’s mouths as small sounds of pleasure echoed quietly between them. When he slipped a finger into her, it didn’t hurt. It seemed to go in with ease, and she could tell she was wet just by the ease of the sensation as he began to move it in and out of her. Sandor captured her lips with his own as he started a slow but sensual pace with her, and Sansa rocked into it. She even pressed down a little bit onto his hand to increase some of the pressure, but he pushed upward at her, too, and a low cry of pleasure escaped her parted lips as he pushed his finger a little deeper inside of her.

 

“More,” Sansa whispered in a low breath against his mouth, and Sandor took a hold of her by the shoulders and gave her a gentle push. Sansa recognized it as an indication for her to roll over with him, and so she let him guide her onto her back upon the bed. Sandor didn’t place himself above her but beside her instead, and she spread her legs open wider. Sandor bent over to kiss her, sliding another finger inside her, and Sansa arched her back beneath him, her stomach and chest rolling from it. She was excited, her body tingling and pulsing with pleasure, and he quickened the pace of his fingers, eliciting quiet moans from her mouth that soon became louder cries. She arched further beneath all of his ministrations, and when Sandor used the familiar curl of his fingers inside of her to hit the spot that made her lose herself and all control of her body’s motions, she felt him place his other hand just above his other hand. Sandor pressed down on her with his palm as he used his thumb against that little sensitive nub at the top as his other hand pleasured her even lower, and she felt the pressure build up too quick—much quicker than before.

 

Her toes curled inward as her whole lower body pulsed with shocks of pleasure throughout every nerve, and her eyes rolled back as she tipped her head into the pillow. A little flash of light seemed to appear and disappear as quickly as it had come to her, and her muscles shook all over as she hit her climax. Sandor’s hand left her lower belly, and he propped himself upon the bed as he leaned over her body to kiss her soundly on the lips as she continued to shake beneath his hand. He was still moving it against her, though more slowly now, as the shocks came to pass over her with a more faded resonance than before. Sansa returned his kiss with a slow movement of her lips against his. Her mind was blank and sated, but she knew she wanted to try one more time with something else.

 

“Get a condom,” she said softly against his lips when they parted for a breath of air, and Sandor pulled away from her to gaze down at her face. He looked to be somewhat surprised at her suggestion this time, and when he opened his mouth to say something, Sansa reached up to place a gentle peck against his lips. “Don’t say no,” Sansa told him. “Please, I want to try.”

 

She felt rather than saw Sandor shake his head just slightly. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

 

“You won’t hurt me,” Sansa breathed out. “Not this time, I promise.”

 

Sandor sighed against her mouth, but he pulled away from her. She glanced over by tilting her head onto its side upon the pillow, and then she slowly closed her legs and rubbed them together at her knees as she watched him reach for the box on the nightstand again. Sandor grabbed one of the condoms, and Sansa watched yet again with an interest for curiosity’s sake as he placed it on himself. Her eyes drifted to the length and width of his manhood, though, and Sansa wondered if his size was a normal size or if he was big. He looked sort of big to her, anyway, but it didn’t look like a ridiculous size. Sansa didn’t have much to go on, though. It wasn’t as if she had seen many of those in her time that weren’t on television, the internet, or her brothers’ friends going streaking across the beach in front of everybody during the summer.

 

Sandor lay down on his back upon the bed, though, instead of crawling over her body and settling himself there. Sansa liked this idea. She could control the pace and the movement of their bodies, and if she didn’t like it, it would be easier to stop because she wouldn’t have to say anything out loud. Pushing herself up by her palms against the mattress, Sansa crawled over to him and straddled Sandor a second time. She had been higher up on his body before. She positioned herself lower this time, and pushing herself up by her knees, she reached between their bodies and took a hold of his length to guide him to her entrance. When he was there, Sansa sank down on his erection and felt her mouth fall open as he slowly began to fill her up. She watched his face, the way his eyes became hooded and clouded over as he gazed up at her, the way his tongue passed between his lips, and the way his eyes finally rolled back as she eased him past the resistance her body wanted to put up against him.

 

Sansa sank all the way down until she was sitting completely against him, full to the brim unlike both times before. Maybe it was the angle, but it didn’t hurt her this time. Sansa wasn’t exactly sure how to move her hips, so she began to rock them gently back and forth, earning a low groan from deep in Sandor’s throat as his hands came up to grasp her hips. He kneaded his thumbs into the sensitive indentions there, and Sansa bent forward over him until they were almost face to face. Instead of moving her whole upper body, she found at this angle she could just easily move her bottom up and down without too much effort, so Sansa did just that, and Sandor gripped her tighter with his hands as her motions pulled another groan from the back of his throat.

 

It felt _good_ again this time. Her body seemed a little achy, but she would get past it. Sansa could not touch him as much as she wanted to at this angle, but Sandor didn’t seem to mind. Their bodies were pressed close, and he used his hands on her hips to help guide her motions. Sansa wasn’t sure just how long it lasted, but she lost herself in the time. They kissed, and sometimes she would pull back just to look at his face, drink in his expression with her gaze, or stare at his eyes if he looked back at her. It was intimate in a way their first time hadn’t been, and she found she loved to gaze at his face as they were together like this. Sandor pressed his forehead to hers at one point, removing one of his hands from her hips just to hold her behind her head and keep her close to him. There were no insane shocks of pleasure like before, but it felt a like a different kind of satisfaction. Sansa felt whole and completed every time he filled her with a thrust, and a gratifying ache passed through her as well.

 

Eventually, Sandor returned both hands to her hips and grasped her hard to hold her in place, effectively halting her movements. Sansa wondered what he meant to do when Sandor suddenly thrust his hips upward and filled her from a slight different angle, causing Sansa to cry out as he struck the right chord inside of her somehow. One of her hands shot out for the headboard, grabbing onto a bar and gripping it tight between her fingers as he held her hips in place while he began to thrust upward into her repeatedly. He filled her up, making her cry out each time, and then he pulled back far enough he almost left her body again before thrusting back into her. Sansa’s knuckles turned white with her grip onto the bar of the headboard, but Sandor drove her straight into another climax as the light exploded behind her eyes as her body gave away to all of the familiar pulses and shocks that came with it.

 

Sansa lost herself for a few moments until a deep, strangled groan filled her ear from Sandor’s mouth, and she pulled back from him long enough to see the look on his face contort as he reached his own climax. Sandor stared back at her with a dazed look inside of his eyes. His last two thrusts became erratic, and then they stopped altogether as his hand laid on the back of her head again while he stared up at her. She pressed her forehead to his, and while they lay still together for a moment, the moment didn’t last very long. Sandor urged her to lift herself up at the hips and off of him, and so Sansa did. She hadn’t wanted to lose the feeling of Sandor inside her, but she didn’t have much of a choice. It didn’t take her long to realize why. He took off the condom and hung his arm over edge of the bed, letting it fall to the floor.

 

Wrapping both of his arms around her, Sandor pulled her back down against his body upon the bed.

 

It was a comforting feeling, being in his arms like this. Sansa closed her eyes and rested her cheek against his chest just under his chin as his hand passed through her hair. Her scalp tingled at the root of every strand, and her shoulders shivered again. Despite all of his roughness he often displayed, Sandor could be gentle and careful with Sansa when he wanted to be. She knew it was inside of him. She had experienced it on many occasions with him. Sandor wasn’t all rough edges and sharp vocabulary. He hid something more beneath the surface that he didn’t always let everybody see, but he let Sansa see it. He shared his inner world with her, even as he shut it away from everyone else, and that took respect, trust, and bravery. Sandor didn’t have to be the heartbreaker in their situation. Sansa could have been one, too, but Sandor trusted her not to be.

 

 _He trusts me_ , Sansa thought to herself, filling her heart well with emotion.

 

Sansa opened her eyes as she lay there. She wanted to say the words, the words Sandor had said to her first but still seemed so afraid of repeating. Sansa mulled them over in her head, wondering if his silence might hurt her more than not saying it if it felt right to say. She swallowed past a nervous catch in her throat, and then she made a choice to say it out loud.

 

“I love you,” Sansa whispered against his chest, and then she placed her lips to his skin to kiss him there. Even if he didn’t repeat it, at least she had said it like she had wanted to do.

 

Sandor cupped Sansa’s face, a hand on each cheek, and urged her to lift her head. She followed his instruction and lifted her head, gazing at him unsurely. A part of her was afraid at why he had wanted to look her in the face. Last time, he had gotten uncomfortable because of it. She didn’t want to see him look at her funny because she had told him she loved him.

 

Sandor didn’t look at her funny, though. He just gazed back at her with a normal expression on his face, raising one hand from her cheek to tuck her hair behind her ear. His eyes followed his fingers before they looked across her features with a peaceful appreciation of them. His thumb grazed her cheek, and Sansa thought, despite the darkness, that she saw a gleam reflected in Sandor’s eyes.

 

“I love you,” he murmured back, his eyes looking hazy as they scanned back and forth across her face. “Every part of you. Inside and out.”

 

Sansa felt her lip begin to tremble, but she bit down on it to stop it. Her eyes also stung slightly, but she tried to ignore it, too. She leaned down quickly to kiss him and silence all of her thoughts that wanted to become words. She didn’t want to speak right now. This was enough. Sansa just wanted to touch and be held, and she wanted to stay in his arms.

 

When they finally parted from their kiss, she scooted off of him to lie on the bed beside Sandor instead of on top of him. It was more comfortable like this, and he turned over on his side to put his arm around her and pull her close. Sansa was not sleepy anymore, and so she lay there content with him, gently circling one of her fingers over his bare chest. It took a while before Sansa realized his breathing had changed pace beneath her hand, and when she looked up at him, Sansa saw Sandor’s eyes were closed and his face was relaxed. When she cupped his jaw, he didn’t respond, and Sansa bit down on her bottom lip with a tinge of amusement because of it. He had fallen asleep on her, and she smiled because it was adorable to her to see him like this, all sated, content, and in need of rest.

 

Leaning forward, Sansa kissed him on the nose and wiggled carefully out of his arms. She didn’t want to wake him, and she didn’t. Sansa had to hurry across the hall to the bathroom to grab her clothes, and then she had to retrieve her panties and bra from the hallway. She quickly slipped back into her clothes right there in the hallway, knowing she had to go home. Sansa couldn’t stay here at Sandor’s for the night. Hurrying out of the hallway, she found her coat in the living room and retrieved her phone from one of its pockets.

 

It was well past midnight. Sansa selected her sister’s number from her phone and dialed it, bringing it to her ear. After a few rings, it picked up. There was blaring music in the background, though.

 

“Give me just a second!” Arya hollered into the phone.

 

Sansa pulled the phone away from her ear, making a face at it, as Arya yelled on the other end. She had to wait for the sound of the music to die off, and then she heard her sister’s voice more clearly through the line.

 

“Hey,” Arya said. “What’s up?”

 

“Can you come pick me up?” Sansa asked, glancing back down the hallway.

 

“I guess so,” Arya told her casually. “Where are you at?”

 

“Sandor’s,” she said.

 

“Okay,” Arya said. “We’ll be there in a few, sis.”

 

“Okay,” Sansa answered back with a smile. “Thank you. I’ll be waiting.”

 

Arya hung up the call, and Sansa lowered her phone. She slipped it back into her coat pocket, and then she slipped on the coat. It was probably colder outside than it had been earlier due to the late hour. With one last glance at the hallway that led towards Sandor’s bedroom, Sansa mouthed the word ‘goodnight’ and turned around to head to the front door. She unlocked it, stepped outside, and closed it behind herself after locking it back. Sansa didn’t want Sandor to wake up to an open apartment.

 

Hugging her arms around herself, Sansa made her way to the elevator and rode down to the ground floor. The apartment building was quiet. There wasn’t a soul in sight. Sansa glanced around as she walked towards the exit, but she stood at the doors without walking outside. It was freezing out there, and she was going to spend her time waiting inside until Arya and Gendry got here.

 

After about ten minutes, she saw a car appear on the street. Sansa pushed out of the apartment building into the cold air beyond the door, shivering involuntarily as she strode right into it. She clutched her coat tighter around herself and looked up expectantly for the car to stop only to find herself frowning as it passed right by the apartment complex. Well, that hadn’t been them, then.

 

Sansa waited out in the cold with her arms crossed over her chest for about five minutes when she saw Gendry’s familiar white car pull up to the building. Arya gaped at Sansa through the window as they pulled up, and she opened the door before Gendry could even stop the vehicle, hopping out of it and meeting Sansa halfway.

 

“What is _wrong_ with you?” Arya hissed in a low voice. “I told you to be careful!”

 

“Careful?” Sansa asked in confusion until she remembered Arya’s story when it came to the kidnapping. According to Arya, they had wanted Sansa. Arya wasn’t going to give it up, and she was going to give a lecture to Sansa on top of that. It made Sansa roll her eyes. “Come on,” she said. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”

 

Arya glared at her, but she wouldn’t say anything else. They walked to the car as Arya hopped into the front passenger seat and Sansa hopped into the back. Once they shut the doors, Gendry took the car out of park and drove steadily along the street. There were hardly any cars out on the roads. Arya buckled herself up, but Sansa sat on the edge of the backseat and took off her coat to lay it beside her. She held onto the headrest of Arya’s seat, leaning towards the back of it.

 

“How was the countdown at the party?” Sansa asked them, and try as she might, she couldn’t erase the cheerful tone of her voice.

 

“Wait a second,” Gendry said suspiciously, “something’s different.”

 

Arya looked over at Gendry, wrinkling her nose. “What? What’s different?”

 

“Yeah, what’s different?” Sansa repeated after her sister.

 

“You,” Gendry answered them both, but he pointed at the rearview mirror as he looked through it at Sansa. “You had _sex_ ,” he said accusingly.

 

“Oh, god!” Arya exclaimed, and she shoved at Gendry’s shoulder. “That’s gross, Gendry! Really? Did you have to go there?”

 

“Hey, no shoving the driver!” Gendry told Arya.

 

“I’ll shove you if I want to!” Arya threw back, and as they argued, Sansa saw the lights of another vehicle behind them.

 

“Children, please,” Sansa said, rolling her eyes for the second time that night. “I didn’t have—”

 

“It’s all _over_ your face, Sansa,” Gendry said. “C’mon, don’t deny it. You did the hokey cokey with San—”

 

Arya shoved Gendry’s shoulder again. “Stop it!” she hollered. “That’s my _camp_ _counselor_ you’re talking about! I don’t want to think about his cock!”

 

“Whoa!” Gendry and Sansa both exclaimed at the same time.

 

“I think we’ve just crossed a line here,” Sansa told them both sternly.

 

Gendry nodded his head. “Yes, agreed,” he said, and he made Arya a face across the armrest. “I have my limits when it comes to talking about cocks.”

 

“What?” Arya threw back at him. “You only talk about your _own_?”

 

“Isn’t that all men?” Gendry asked innocently, and Sansa couldn’t help it, but she laughed at his answer.

 

Arya, however, was agitated instead of amused. “God, Gendry,” Arya snapped at him, “you’re such a pri—”

 

The sound of an engine revving filled Sansa’s ears, and she thought maybe it was Gendry at first, but it wasn’t him. Gendry was driving the speed limit. Suddenly, bright lights flooded the rearview mirror, blinding all of Sansa’s vision, when the impact of another vehicle that was much bigger than Gendry’s collided into them from behind, sending a forceful lurch throughout the entire car.

 

Sansa flew against Arya’s seat, which knocked the wind out of her. Sansa gasped for breath as Arya hollered out, and Gendry swore loudly up in the front seat.

 

“What the _fuck_ was that?” Gendry yelled, looking up into the rearview.

 

Sansa whirled her head around to look out of the back window. The vehicle on their tail was huge with headlights like floodlights. As Sansa stared at it in shock, she heard its engine rev once more and watched helpless as it zoomed up to meet them again.

 

“ _Hold on_!” Sansa hollered out, and she wrapped her arms around Arya’s seat as she squeezed her eyes shut.

 

A second impact sent another forceful lurch throughout the vehicle, and the back window smashed into a million glass shards. Most of it remained connected, but a few of the pieces sprinkled over the backseat and hit Sansa’s back and hair.

 

“ _Fuck_!” Gendry yelled, and he slammed his foot onto the gas peddle.

 

Sansa felt the car speed up all of a sudden, flying down the road, but the monster behind them sped up, too. She glanced back one more time, but she couldn’t see anything but splintered light through the smashed glass.

 

“Gendry, slow down!” Sansa hollered at him, looking forward again. If they kept driving like this, they were going to crash. She didn’t even have her seatbelt on—

 

Another engine rev filled her ears, and Sansa felt all of the noise drop out of her ears and bottom out into a low hum right before the monster truck behind them rammed into them a third time.

 

The whole world flipped upside down as the vehicle spun and flew through the air.

 

Sansa felt the impact, the spin, and she fell, hitting hard against the insides of the vehicle as it flipped over onto its roof and rolled with a screech against the road. She heard the distant wail of sirens filling up her ears with a musical hum as she lay there, dazed, unable to move at first. There was broken glass all around her, and the inside of the car was dramatically smaller—crushed, her legs caught. She couldn’t move them. Sansa felt her bottom lip tremble as she tried to pull herself free.

 

She looked around, twisted at an odd and painful angle, and saw Arya buckled up and upside down in her seat, hanging there as if unconscious. Panic filled her heart, and Sansa reached out for her sister to shake her shoulder. “Arya,” Sansa whispered hoarsely. “Arya, please, wake up—” Sansa continued to shake Arya’s shoulder, feeling tears stinging her eyes and blurring her vision. Turning to look at Gendry in the driver seat, caught much like Arya, Sansa tried to speak to him, too. “Gendry,” Sansa said, feeling her voice still scratchy. “Gendry, please—”

 

He groaned, but he barely moved, and he didn’t say any words.

 

Sansa’s whole jaw was trembling now. She had to get out of the vehicle. She had to crawl out of it. If she could get out of the vehicle, then she could pull Arya and Gendry out of it, too, and get them to safety.

 

Sansa twisted her head, looking at the broken window. She had to crawl through glass to get outside of the car.

 

Biting down hard on her bottom lip, Sansa tugged at her legs and put one hand against the ground and took hold of the car with the other, and then she pulled as hard as she could pull. A searing pain began to cut into her legs, and it slowly tore a scream out of her throat as she pulled her legs free from their trap. She felt them fall to the ground, numb but not broken, and she knew not to look at them. They were probably bleeding badly. If she looked, she might pass out.

 

Sansa braced her hands against the ground and dragged herself forward through the glass shards littered around her. They dug into her skin, cutting her skin and digging through her clothes. Sansa felt tears welling up in her eyes, but she knew she couldn’t give up. She had to get out of Gendry’s car. With determination, she pulled herself through the glass and ended up halfway out of the window when she looked up.

 

Bright, blinding headlights stung her sight, and Sansa saw the silhouette of a tall and broad-shouldered man approaching her. He was bigger than anything she’d ever seen before.

 

In fact, he almost looked as tall as a mountain.

 

The man halted his booted feet right in front of her, and Sansa looked up higher. She could see him more clearly up close. The light shone around him like some kind of halo illuminating his frame, and he stooped down to her level. He looked like a normal person with dark hair shaved close to his head, a closely trimmed beard and mustache, and piercing eyes. His face was even somewhat handsome, and he looked familiar to her, so familiar in his face to her. His arms were huge with muscles. His torso was so big it stretched his shirt thin. He was nothing but pure muscle, the biggest man she had ever seen in her entire life.

 

His eyes, though. His eyes were cold and dead, but they shone with something akin to curiosity or some kind of interest as he stared at her.

 

Without a single word spoken, he pushed himself upright again and grabbed her arm. He didn’t even try to help her to her feet. He _dragged_ her across the broken shards of glass and the rough asphalt of the street, and Sansa screamed as sharp pain sliced through her skin and warm blood ran slick down her legs, leaving a dark red trail across the grey asphalt as he dragged her like some disobedient dog on a leash.

 

“Stop!” Sansa hollered out through her tears. “Let me go!”

 

She tried to struggle against him, but the man got her halfway across the road to his car when a new set of lights appeared on the black horizon, flashing blue into the night. A siren’s wail accompanied it, and the man let go of her suddenly. She dropped to the ground, sore and aching all over and wanting nothing more than to cry the pain out, but that wasn’t going to get her anywhere.

 

Her hands and forearms were embedded with little slivers of glass, but there was nothing she could do about them just yet. Sansa raised her head to look forward as the flashing blues lights drew to a halt on the street, and the man walked over to her left, getting closer to his vehicle. Sansa noticed he had pulled a gun from his belt, aiming it at the police car, and her heart leapt into her throat.

 

Police would have guns, though. He wouldn’t be the only one with a gun.

 

The doors to the police vehicle flew open, and two people stepped out of it. Their frames were blinded by all of the lights, but Sansa heard the familiar voice of one of them call out, “Drop your weapon and put your hands on your head! _Now_!”

 

Sansa felt her heart fill with elation.

 

 _Loras_ , she thought.

 

 _But hadn’t he been at the party?_ she asked herself. Loras had been drinking and off-duty. He wasn’t in his uniform, but the officer with him was dressed in uniform. Both of them held guns, though, and they had them aimed at the man who had dragged her across the street.

 

The man said nothing, but he stared forward at them.

 

“Drop your weapon!” the other officer hollered louder. “Now!”

 

“We will open fire if you do not _lower your weapon_!” Loras threatened as he stared down the barrel of his gun at the man.

 

Still, there was silence. Sansa saw as the nameless man slowly began to lower his gun as if he meant to comply. Smiling, she looked forward at Loras and the other officer. She just wanted to get out of this mess. Sansa wasn’t even sure if they had seen her. Slowly, she tried to crawl forward some more.

 

Loras spotted her movement on the road. He tore his gaze from the man and saw her, his eyes growing wide with shock. Whether it was because of her condition or just the sight of her there, Sansa never found out.

 

As she opened her mouth to say something, the man swiftly raised his gun again, and with an expert aim, fired off three rounds straight into Loras’s chest.

 

Sansa screamed as she saw the bullets impact him. She heard more rounds firing through the air, but she couldn’t bring herself to care about them. She crawled her way slowly towards Loras as she watched him collapse to the ground. Out of the corner of her vision, the other officer shook violently as bullets struck him, too. He collapsed to the road as well, his gun clattering against the asphalt.

 

Blue lights flashed silently through the night as Sansa crawled towards the police car.

 

“Loras!” she called out unevenly, her voice clotted from the buildup in her throat as tears poured down her cheeks. Her vision blurred before her, the flashing blue lights taking a soft focus. Her hands and forearms stung with every move of her body, but she didn’t care as long as she reached him. “Loras, please!” Sansa cried out, her voice breaking.

 

She managed to make it to the police car without being stopped, and to her relief, Loras was still moving on the ground. She reached his side, placing her shaking hands on his chest to check to see if he had a bulletproof vest on, but she felt the soft skin of chest beneath his shirt.

 

Loras turned his head towards her, his brown curls falling to the side with it.

 

“The gun,” Loras whispered, and his eyes looked at something beside them. “Get my gun, Sansa.”

 

Sansa followed his eyes to his gun, which had fallen on the street a few feet away from them. As she reached out for it, a looming shadow appeared over her, and then a heavy booted foot stepped on her hand, crushing it into the asphalt and digging the little shards of glass deeper into her skin. Sansa cried out in pain, and the foot lifted itself from her hand long enough to kick the gun away from her.

 

The man had followed her all the way over here, letting her crawl to Loras.

 

Before Sansa could do anything else, the man snatched her by the shoulder and yanked her back from Loras. He aimed the barrel of his gun straight at Loras’s head, and Loras looked right down the barrel at him.

 

Loras’s mouth twitched as he looked up at the man. “They’re coming for y—”

 

The man pulled the trigger, and Sansa screamed out as she shut her eyes to hide the grisly sight from view, but it was too late. It was already embedded into her memory. She felt her chest shake with violent sobs as she tried to pull herself out of the man’s grasp. Sansa opened her eyes again, reaching out for Loras.

 

“Loras!” Sansa screamed out, hot tears pouring down her cheeks. “Loras! Please, no, Loras! No, no, no, _no_! Loras, come _back_. Loras, come back to me, _please_. Please, Loras, _please_ —”

 

Sansa could barely breathe through the wheezing inhalations her body drew into her lungs. The pain inside of her was unlike anything she had ever experienced before in all her life. It was a crushing weight upon her chest, suffocating every breath of air out of her with an immense strain. It felt like a pulsing spike had been lodged into her heart, sending sharp throbs throughout the center of her chest. Her heart pounded wildly, denying the very act she had seen happen before her with her own eyes, and she reached out, blindly grappling for Loras’s hand on the asphalt. When she grasped it, she held fast. Sansa held onto Loras as tightly as she could as the man tried dragging her away from him again. Loras’s body halted their movements, though, tugging a few inches across the ground with them because of her grip firm on his hand.

 

“ _Please_ ,” Sansa choked out, “don’t leave me, Loras—”

 

The man halted in his steps and turned around, and before Sansa knew what he was doing, hard metal cracked across her cheek as a blinding pain shot through her face. She lost her grip on Loras’s hand as the world swam sickly all around her.

 

She felt herself being dragged across the asphalt again, and then the man stooped over and scooped her up, throwing her over his shoulder.

 

The world became upside down, and Sansa watched as it swayed slowly before her vision, making her ill to her stomach. The blue lights continued to flash as steady and clear white lights shone out brightly into the night, blurring the sight of Gendry’s flipped vehicle as it danced back and forth in front of her and grew more distant with each step. Slowly, Sansa’s vision began to fade away from her.

 

Before Sansa knew it, the world faded into blackness as her mind slipped out of consciousness.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author’s Note #2:** I have been mentioning for a long time that there would be a body count towards the end of the plot, and here it has begun. None of these choices were made out of fun, but simply because bringing Gregor into the equation was never going to be a simple and easy thing for anyone to escape from without consequences. I intend to write him as the villain he is in the books, not a caricature of a bad guy that falls easily without inflicting any real damage, and sadly, that means a lot of destruction will follow in his wake. I never had the archive warnings on before because I was never really sure how the plot might evolve or change along the way (as some things about it have changed on me a few times), how graphic I intended to write the violent scenes towards the end, and also because through 400,000 words they just never applied to the story, and that’s a long time. As I said, though, it was a hard chapter for me to write. I hope, though, you are all still with the story to the end.


	94. With a Thousand Lies and a Good Disguise

_* * *_

 

There was a sudden commotion in the club, and Jaime looked up from his drink to survey his surroundings. He saw the descent of men dressed in dark suits and wearing wire headsets coming down the spiral staircase beyond the crowd, and a suspicious, uneasy feeling churned near the bottom of his stomach. It wasn’t the sort of thing most people would pick up on, but Jaime had seen enough of those formations in his time to know it meant something was happening. Jaime pushed his glass away from himself, scooting it across the bar, and got up from his stool. His eyes searched the crowd for Brienne. She should have been back by now. It took him a moment, but Jaime spotted her silver dress glittering under the bright strobe lights. He raised his arm into the air, waving at her.

 

Brienne saw his arm and immediately took notice of it, changing her direction to come towards him. She had been a little off the mark of the bar area, but it wasn’t as if she had been to this nightclub much before. Brienne wasn’t the drinking and partying type. She avoided alcohol and dancing, finding neither one amusing or fun. Jaime had tried to change her mind on those matters on a few occasions, but without much luck.

 

By the time Brienne reached him, Jaime noticed her face was flushed red on her cheeks, chin, and forehead. Her eyes were also bright and shining, and her short blonde hair stuck to her forehead with sweat. Brienne leaned in close to his ear to speak to him.

 

“Did you see Loras leave?” she asked him, raising her voice above the roar of the music. Brienne pulled away from him to look at his face, and Jaime narrowed his eyes, shaking his head in confusion.

 

“No,” Jaime said loudly, “I didn’t see Loras leave. Why?”

 

“It looked like he was having an argument with somebody,” Brienne told Jaime. “One of the security guards, I think, but I’m not sure. He was dressed like one of them. I saw Loras storm off, though, and then he found Officer Oakheart on duty over by the wall, helping to watch the floor because of the party. Loras snatched him by the arm and yelled something at him. Next thing I knew, the two of them were hurrying off together. I tried to follow them, but then I saw Renly come out with a whole crowd of security around him, so I tried to watch him and follow him without being seen. They headed off towards the back exit.” Brienne shook her head, her whole face creased with worry. “Something is going down, Jaime. Something big is happening, and I don’t know what.”

 

“If something has happened,” Jaime quickly reasoned, “and Loras shared it with another officer, then that means it’s on the radio, right?”

 

Brienne nodded her head. “Right,” she said. “It would be on the radio.”

 

“Oakheart is as clean as they come,” Jaime said, gazing off at the crowd beyond Brienne’s shoulder. He chewed on his bottom lip thoughtfully. “There’s no way he’s involved with shady operations.” Jaime knew that Arys Oakheart was clean, but if something was happening that stirred up the likes of Renly Baratheon to take sudden action, then it was definitely something big. Jaime wanted to know what it was, even if it was dangerous.

 

This could be the big thing that busted everything open.

 

Jaime glanced back at Brienne. “Let’s get back to the house,” he suggested, “and we’ll get the police vehicle. We’ll find out exactly where Loras went. If anything, maybe we can be of assistance to whatever is going on.”

 

“You mean _I_ can be of assistance, Jaime,” Brienne said in a stern voice. “ _Me_ , not you. You don’t have a badge anymore, remember?”

 

“I can still come with you,” Jaime said. “I’m not letting you walk into that alone.”

 

With that, Jaime turned back towards the counter and slapped a few bills onto it to pay for his drink. As he tucked his wallet back into his pants pocket, he turned away from bar and walked towards the exit. He glanced back over his shoulder to make sure that Brienne was following him, and he saw her trailing after his footsteps while glaring pointedly at the back of his head. Jaime cocked a smile at Brienne before looking forward again to watch where he was going, sidestepping his way through the drunken and reveling crowd.

 

Once they were outside together, they made their way over towards Jaime’s car. He hit the unlocking button on his key ring device, and the doors to his vehicle unlocked with two beeps. Jaime slipped into the driver seat as Brienne walked to the passenger side, opening the door and seating herself beside him. He cranked the car and pulled out of the parking space, adjusting the rearview mirror since Brienne had been the one to drive them over here from the house. It was freezing outside as well, so he turned up the heat as high as it would go. It was only then that he realized Brienne had left her coat back at the nightclub, but Jaime wasn’t turning back now to go get it.

 

“Shit,” Brienne hissed, reaching up with both hands to rub them across her arms. “I forgot my coat.”

 

“We’ll swing by and get it tomorrow,” Jaime told her, turning around the street corner. “The heat will kick in soon.”

 

Brienne nodded her head beside him, not willing to turn back now either, and he drove the rest of the way to their house without saying another word and trying his best to follow the speed limit. Jaime’s mind was in a rush, but he didn’t want to get pulled over for flying across the streets on the night of New Year’s Eve. It wasn’t long until they were pulling up to their driveway at home, though. Jaime parked the car on the curb instead of pulling in behind Brienne’s police vehicle, and they got out of the car together. Brienne hurried across the lawn towards the house, and Jaime wondered what she was after inside until he remembered their guns.

 

It would be good to have guns just in case they needed them.

 

He hurried across the lawn as well, entering the house right behind Brienne. She had left the front door wide open as she ran down the hallway to their bedroom. Jaime reached their bedroom not long after Brienne, and he saw her holding her police issued firearm and checking it for bullets. As she walked over to the closet to snatch another coat down to wear, Jaime got his gun as well and tucked it into the waistband of his pants.

 

Brienne turned around to face Jaime as she slipped into a new coat. “Ready?” she asked him.

 

“Ready,” he said, giving her a quick nod.

 

Brienne led the way back out of their house with Jaime pausing to shut and lock the door behind themselves. He hurried over to the police cruiser and hopped in on the passenger side this time while Brienne slipped into the driver seat. Once the car was cranked, Jaime turned on the police transmitter.

 

“ . . . On the corner of Rosby and Iron,” a voice said through the intercom system. “We have tried making contact with the officers on pursuit, but no response has been received. All nearby units please report to the corner of Rosby and Iron for a possible situation of officers down . . . ”

 

Jaime looked up at Brienne. Her mouth was hanging open in shock. Raising her eyes from the radio, she locked gazes with Jaime.

 

“ _Drive_ ,” he said.

 

Neither one of them even bothered to put on their seatbelts as Brienne took one glance out of the rearview mirror. She quickly backed the car out of the driveway and into the street behind them. Jaime turned on the emergency lights at the top of the police cruiser, and then Brienne tore down the streets with her foot pressed firm onto the gas peddle, giving them a constant acceleration. Along the way, she disobeyed every traffic law they came across, flying past stop signs and through red lights and driving well over the speed limit in every area. They didn’t have much time, though. They had to get there as soon as possible.

 

When they arrived on the scene at the four-way crossing of Robsy Street and Iron Street, the entire area was lit up to sixty yards with flashing blue and red lights. Jaime felt a sudden constriction growing tight within his chest at the sight of so many emergency lights glowing into the night. Something had already happened here, and they were too late to stop it. Jaime glanced over at Brienne, who looked just as nervous as he felt. It was written all over her face as she slowed down the car to bring it to a stop on the road in front of an array of police cruisers blocking off the intersection. All of their lights were flashing, and Jaime could see beyond the block of vehicles that there were two ambulances and a fire truck parked on the opposite side of the scene.

 

Jaime opened his door and jumped out of the car before Brienne could properly park it. She hollered after him, but he was already running past the line of police cars and into the fray—until an arm flew out in front of him, hitting him smack in the chest to stop his approach.

 

“This is a _restricted_ area, sir—”

 

Jaime froze at the impact of the arm against his chest, and he turned his head to look at the woman who had put it there. His jaw fell open at the sight before him. There was no way this was real. He would know her face anywhere. She did not have a twin like he did. She was a one of a kind, and right now, she was dressed head to toe all in black with a trench coat that reached right down to her polished black shoes. It was buttoned all the way up to her collar, her silvery blonde hair spilling over the black material in a shimmery cascade. She wasn’t wearing one of her usual silver cocktail dresses tonight either. Jaime’s glance downward had revealed black slacks at the very bottom of her coat.

 

His eyes met her eyes again, and her initially stern expression turned into shock that was clear in her violet eyes. She hadn’t expected to see him here either. Jaime tried to reason against all sense of how and why she was here and what it meant, but his mind simply didn’t have time to catch up to his mouth.

 

“Dany?” Jaime breathed out, tilting his head to the side. He sounded as if all the wind had been kicked out of his chest.

 

Daenerys schooled her startled expression into a look of calm and narrowed her eyes at Jaime. She turned her head back towards the scene ahead of them. Jaime’s eyes followed her gaze, landing on the wreckage beyond the blockade of police cruisers.

 

“This is not a scene for civilians,” Dany informed him with a brisk tone, but there was no trace of her foreign accent in it either. She sounded like a professional as well as one of the locals. When Dany turned to look Jaime again, her eyes shone in the darkness like fire. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave, _Lannister_ ,” Dany added slowly, drawling out his name like it was a curse on the tip of her tongue.

 

“Like _hell_ ,” Jaime snapped back at her, and he said it just in time for Brienne to appear in the corner of his vision, hurrying towards them. He saw Brienne freeze all of a sudden, and without even looking at her, he could sense the tension that came off of her at the sight of Dany here, too.

 

“ . . . Dany?” Brienne inquired from Jaime’s left side. She sounded as shocked as Jaime had sounded only a moment ago.

 

“What’s going on here?” Jaime demanded from Dany, and he shook Dany’s arm off of his chest as he took a step away from her. “You’re a damn mail-order _bride_. How the hell are you here?”

 

Dany’s eyes flared up under the array of flashing emergency lights, glowing red and then blue. It must have been something about their natural violet color that allowed them to shift so effortlessly. With a practiced flourish that said she had done this a thousand times before, Dany procured a black leather wallet from her coat pocket. She flipped it open to reveal a golden badge next to an identification card.

 

“I am Special Agent Daenerys Targaryen,” she announced firmly, “with Interpol. I have more authority than you to be here.”

 

Jaime felt his eyes grow even wider. “Interpol?” he repeated in a weak voice, dumbfounded at the information. _This isn’t happening_ , Jaime thought. _This is some kind of joke_. “That’s . . . that’s not possible,” he said. “You’ve been to my house. You’ve been—”

 

“I don’t have _time_ ,” Dany snapped, “for a hundred and one questions. We have a hit and run collision, two officers down, two injured civilians—”

 

Her words were like a distant fog alarm in Jaime’s ears as he turned his head to look once more at the wreckage strewn across the road. Shards of broken glass glittered under the play of flashing lights, and there were two black body bags on the ground by the empty police cruiser that had both of its doors wide open. Yards beyond the cruiser, there was a flipped over vehicle. Its trunk was halfway smashed into the car itself, the back window was completely shattered, and the roof had been partially crushed under the weight of the vehicle. There were two ambulances close to the wreckage site and two stretchers, and on one of those two stretchers was a very familiar young lady. Strapped over her face was an oxygen mask, and she was groggy but clearly awake, rolling her head to the side as she opened and closed her eyes.

 

Jaime got one small glimpse of her, and then he took off running.

 

“Arya!” he hollered out as he ran, and in the background he heard Special Agent Targaryen shouting for someone to stop him and get him off of the scene. Jaime kept running, though, despite her command. He narrowly dodged an EMT in his path until he reached Arya’s side. Jaime came to a halt beside her stretcher just as Arya opened her eyes, blinking hazily up at him.

 

She looked taken aback to see him, but there was also a relief in her expression to see someone familiar around her. “Jaime,” Arya spoke through her oxygen mask, though the rubbery plastic muffed her voice. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then she reached up to pull the mask out of the way and over her head.

 

“Miss, you have to keep the oxygen mask on—” an EMT protested beside her.

 

“Shove off,” Arya told the woman, rolling her eyes. She looked at Jaime, blinking her eyes slowly to bring him into focus. “Where’s Sansa? I saw Gendry. He’s on a stretcher, too. They said he’s all right. Sansa was in the backseat. Where is she?”

 

Jaime’s eyes widened, and he looked to the EMT. “Was there another girl here?” he asked.

 

The EMT looked confused as she shook her head. “No, sir,” she answered him. “There were only these two inside the vehicle, and then the two deceased officers beside the cruiser. There was no one else on the scene.”

 

“She was _right_ here with us,” Arya hissed, and then her eyes went wide with fear as she glanced back at Jaime. “Jaime, they’ve got her,” she added quickly, panic filling her voice and making her speak even faster. “They’ve kidnapped her. She was right here with us, I _swear_. They took her. You have to find her before they _hurt_ her—”

 

“Who took her?” Jaime asked, reaching out for Arya’s hand. He laid it gently on top of hers, hoping it would help to pacify her.

 

Arya’s eyes welled up with tears, though. “I don’t know,” Arya said stubbornly. “You have to believe me. They crashed into us on purpose. If Sansa’s gone, they took her—”

 

“All right,” Jaime said with a calm voice, and he gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “All right, calm down. We’ll figure something ou—”

 

“Jaime,” Brienne called from behind him, her voice cracking.

 

Jaime looked over his shoulder. Brienne was crouched by one of the body bags, a hand on her mouth as the other one held up a corner of the shiny black material. Brienne stared for a moment, and then dropped the bag, turning her head to look away from the sight she had just witnessed beneath it. Her hand turned over as well, and she put the back of it against her mouth as she closed her eyes. Jaime had never seen such an expression of anguish on her face before.

 

He turned back to Arya on the stretcher, running his thumb over the edge of her knuckles in a soothing gesture. “I’ll be right back, okay?” Jaime told her, and Arya nodded her head. Jaime tipped his head back to her with the smallest of smiles on his face before he let go of Arya’s hand and turned away from her to hurry over to Brienne’s side next to the body bag.

 

A feeling of trepidation arose in his chest as he neared her, though. Jaime knew it was a police officer, and he had an idea of who it might be inside that black bag.

 

“It’s Loras,” Brienne choked out, covering her mouth with the palm of her hand. Jaime looked away from the bag and down at her, seeing the glimmer of tears in her eyes. Brienne quickly pushed herself back to her feet and walked away from the body bag, covering her face with both hands.

 

Jaime glanced back down at the body bag.

 

Slowly, as if in a dream, Jaime crouched down and pulled back the black cover to reveal the ruined face beneath it. He felt instantly sick to his stomach, dropping the bag and covering his mouth. Jaime turned his head away and stood up again, walking away from the bag as Brienne had done. There was no mistaking Loras for someone else, even with an entry wound in the middle of his face. Jaime felt his stomach churn suddenly, and the little bit of alcohol in his system didn’t help with the ill feeling. Loras was dead, a bullet to the head.

 

Jaime ran both hands over his face before he stared out at nothing in particular in front of himself. He saw the distant blurry figures of people moving beyond the flashing red and blue lights, but he couldn’t make out their uniforms or clothing. He had no idea who they were or what their purpose was here. It was all a really bad dream that didn’t make any sense. Someone had crashed into the back of a car carrying Arya, Gendry, and Sansa, murdered two police officers, and stole off with Sansa in tow. For some reason, Arya and Gendry were still alive.

 

Why didn’t the killer put a bullet hole through their heads as well?

 

“Jaime,” Brienne called out, coming up behind him. She startled him, but Jaime lowered his hands from his face and turned to look at her. There were silent tears on her cheeks. Tears shed for Loras Tyrell. “I have no idea what is going on, but I am going to stay here with,” she paused, a confused expression flitting across her face, “with Agent Dany. I want to know who did this to Loras. I don’t care what he was involved with. Loras was no murderer. He was no criminal. Whoever did this is going to pay.”

 

“I’ll stay with you,” Jaime said firmly, nodding his head towards her.

 

Brienne shook her head, though. “No,” she told him, and she lifted up her chin to indicate something behind him. “You go with Arya to the hospital. You’re not an officer of the law anymore. You can’t be on the scene or involved with this matter either. I asked Agent Dany to give you a moment with Arya when you ran off a moment ago. I don’t know who she is or what she has to do with all of this, but she is somebody important, Jaime. We only thought something big was going on, but this proves it.” She held both of her arms out to her sides, encompassing the wreckage around them. “This _proves_ it, Jaime.”

 

“Sansa was here,” he said. “Arya told me she was in the car with them, but she’s not here and the EMTs didn’t see her.”

 

Brienne looked to the side, pondering his words. She turned away from Jaime to look at Agent Daenerys Targaryen again. “There was another girl here,” Brienne called out to Dany. “She’s missing now. Sansa Stark, a young woman of eighteen years of age with auburn hair. Very tall and pretty. Whoever did this probably has her in their custody—”

 

Brienne’s ability to be so clear and concise despite the circumstances floored him. Jaime heard her voice fade away from his hearing as he turned to look back at the ambulance. They were loading Arya’s stretcher into the back of it. He would be of more help with Brienne, but Ned and Cat needed to know what was going on. He could ride with Arya and Gendry to the hospital, and on the way there, Jaime could give her parents a call to let them know what had just happened out here.

 

Jaime brought both of his hands to his hair, running his fingers through it.

 

His whole body was thrumming with agitation. Jaime wanted to take action, but there was nothing he could do immediately. He could be there for Arya, though.

 

It took him a moment, but he had made his decision.

 

“Brienne,” he called out, looking over his shoulder. Brienne turned to look at him across the distance. She had walked over to Agent Targaryen as they exchanged information about Sansa Stark. “I’ll go with Arya to the hospital,” Jaime told her. “Be safe,” he added, his tone louder but somehow also softer. “I love you.”

 

Brienne couldn’t manage a true smile back at him during a time like this, but the corner of her mouth quirked upwards slightly, and it was enough for Jaime. He nodded his head at her short response and turned away from her, hurrying back over to the ambulance. He hopped into the back, even as the EMTs protested at his presence inside of the vehicle.

 

“It’s okay,” Arya said through the barrier of her oxygen mask, which they had placed back over her mouth. “He’s my cousin,” she lied effortlessly.

 

Jaime glanced up at one of the EMT’s skeptical faces, and he nodded his head to go along with the lie. Despite their looks of misgiving, they allowed him to stay on board. Jaime took a seat on one of the benches inside of the ambulance, and he looked back out at Brienne, his eyes meeting her eyes briefly across the distance. Their gazes locked, and then the ambulance doors were shut and Brienne’s face vanished from his view.

 

He felt the lurch of the vehicle as it pulled off slowly from the scene. Gendry was not inside of this ambulance but another one, and Jaime watched as Arya stared up at the ceiling the whole time, unwilling to close her eyes.

 

When they arrived at the hospital, they unloaded Arya’s stretcher and rolled her through the front entrance. Jaime told Arya he would be inside after her shortly, and she nodded her head in understanding without saying anything. He stayed outside as the automatic doors to the emergency entrance slid shut, and then he reached for his phone in his pants pocket.

 

Jaime quickly dialed a number in his phone, and it didn’t take long for someone to answer it.

 

“Hello?” greeted a coy and familiar voice through the phone line. It was Varys, Jaime’s former colleague and friend from the department who specialized with informants. Jaime hadn’t been sharing the information with Brienne, but he had been exchanging information with Varys ever since their plot to uncover what was going on had begun.

 

“Hey, it’s me,” Jaime said, pausing for only a moment. “Tell me where Sandor Clegane is right now.”

 

 


	95. I’m Flesh and Blood, and My Body Hurts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** This chapter contains some very strong and graphic depictions of violence. Proceed with caution if that sort of thing makes you a little ill in the stomach.

_* * *_

 

As her consciousness came back to the present, her head swimming with vertigo, Sansa felt the cold touch of metal against the skin of her forearms and legs. With a spark of elation, she realized she could feel her legs again. However, they were chilly from their bareness, and as she tried to move them, she felt thick, crusty streaks of something on her skin scrape her skin between her legs and found her ankles bound together. Sansa’s stomach churned with nausea. They were trails of dried blood and scabs from her wounds, and some of it crumbled off of her skin, but it was followed by little pangs from wherever it fell off as the cold air met her re-opened wounds. Her muscles throbbed with a dull ache, silently screaming at her.

 

Slowly, her eyes fluttered open to look at her surroundings, but the realization that she was blindfolded came to her far too late. Panic surged anew in her chest, and she went to lift her hands, finding them tied above her head. However, there was something strange about them. Sansa felt each of her palms and individual fingers bound in loose pieces of gauze as if they had been bandaged up. There was an ointment beneath the gauze, making it stick to her skin. She wondered at why a man who would do all of what he had done to her, her friends, and her sister would take up the task of treating and bandaging the wounds in her hands as if it meant something to him.

 

The man might have killed Arya and Gendry. They could be dead right now as she lay here on this cold metal table, agonizing over her wounds. That car wreck could have killed them both, and Sansa had no idea of knowing whether Arya or Gendry had lived or died because of it. She had watched as the man put a gun to Loras’s head, pulling the trigger right in front of her. Sansa had screamed, seeing all of it and wanting to erase it from her memory, but the images were branded behind the darkness of her eyes beneath a blindfold. The man had killed Loras right in front of her—a bullet to his warm and kind face, a face that had smiled at her once as he helped her back onto her feet when she had fallen and scraped her knees on the sidewalk when she was younger. Much like his sister, Margaery, Loras had always been there for Sansa as a friend.

 

And now, he was gone forever.

 

Sansa felt the tears sting hot in her eyes, but the blindfold soaked them up, not allowing them to fall. Her hair was a knotted mess beneath her, and she thought about getting off of the table. She didn’t hear anyone nearby. Maybe if she could get onto her feet and remove the bonds and blindfold, she could escape—but just as the thought came to her, it was dashed away. Sansa froze as she heard voices in the distance, talking as their footsteps clanked on metal grates.

 

“He won’t be pleased,” one of the voices said, sounding mildly agitated. “How are her wounds to be explained now? It will link her to the car wreck—”

 

“Who cares?” a second, much deeper voice answered, cutting him off. The man sounded bored, untouched by the worries of the first man. “They can blame the car wreck on him, too.”

 

“Without his car smashed to bits?” the first man retorted.

 

“Who says he needed to use his own car?”

 

Sansa heard one of them sigh as they drew closer to her, and it sounded like the first man, not the second one. She didn’t know where she was or why she was being held here, and her heart began to race inside of her chest as their footsteps became heavier and sounded nearer than before.

 

“I have removed the glass from her skin and dressed her wounds as best as I can. She isn’t supposed to _die_ ,” the first man hissed, “the plan was for—”

 

“I know the plan,” the second man said with his deep voice, cutting him off. “Do you have your necklace?”

 

There was another sigh. “Yes, I have it,” he answered.

 

“Then, get to business, so I can get on with the plan.”

 

They were close, and Sansa feigned stillness to give the appearance that she was still unconscious. She felt an arm reach over her chest, a hand lying against her neck. She kept her stillness, unwilling to move. It took Sansa a moment to realize the man was pressing two fingers against her pulse point. Eventually, he pulled his hand away.

 

“Good,” he said quietly, almost as if to himself. “You’re still breathing. You still have a pulse.” Sansa felt his hand go to her forehead, caressing forward into her hair. Her whole body wanted to tremble at the unwanted contact, but she forced herself to remain still. “Is she still bleeding anywhere?” he asked aloud, directing his question to the other man.

 

“Why don’t you cut her and get it over with?”

 

The man’s hand left her hair. Sansa panicked. She didn’t want anyone putting a knife to her. She didn’t want to be cut, but she didn’t know how to stop it. Even if she sat up and tried to get away, they would only hold her down and make her go through with it. Sansa couldn’t stop them, and at least right now in her silence she could listen to everything they said and remember it, and they would never know she was even listening.

 

However, she never felt a knife come in contact with her skin. Sansa heard some rustling, and the sound and snap of rubber on skin. She panicked even more, not knowing what it was or its purpose. A gloved hand laid itself upon her leg, and Sansa bit down hard on her tongue.

 

 _Please, no, not that_ —

 

Her ankles were bound, though. They would have to cut her binds. Instead, she felt a twinge of pain as the man peeled off one of her larger scabs. She bit down harder on her tongue, nearly drawing blood. Her leg did draw blood. His hands squeezed on her skin to make sure it did, and then she felt something ice cold on a chain drag across her open wound, picking up the blood. One of the men had mentioned a necklace, but why would they drag a necklace across her bleeding wound . . .

 

His hands left her skin, the blindfold soaking up the few tears that squeezed out of her eyes behind the fabric. Sansa heard the sound of something clinking into a plastic bag, a quick zip, and then the men were talking again.

 

“Stick with the plan,” the man closest to her said with a quiet voice. “Call them both here. Take care of them, but don’t kill the girl. Call me when the deed is done, and I will come and get her.” She heard footsteps of the man closest to her walking away from her, and then a sudden halt. “Do _not_ touch her. Evidence of you being involved will ruin everything. It’s bad enough you’ve already crashed your vehicle into theirs and made a mess of things. Your propensity for violence is most assuring, but your proclivities with the fairer sex are not.”

 

There was a moment of silence.

 

“Are you done?” the other man asked, and his deep voice was on edge with a tinge of annoyance.

 

“Yes,” the first man told him, though his tone was clipped. “I’ll be leaving now.”

 

“Good.”

 

Sansa heard another stretch of silence between the men, which was followed by the sound of footsteps walking away from her. The feet went from solid floor to metal grate, clanking as they grew more distant to her ears. However, as the one pair of feet walked away from her, she heard another pair drawing closer. Heavy boots paused beside her table, and Sansa sensed a tall presence looming over her, eyes boring into her. She lay perfectly still. After everything she had heard in the men’s conversation, she was terrified of this one in particular. The other man had left her alone with him after warning him not to touch her. _Proclivities with the fairer sex_ , he had said. If it meant what Sansa thought it meant, she would not be able to hold onto her composure for much longer.

 

 _Please_ , she prayed, _don’t let anything happen to me_. _Don’t let anything happen to me_.

 

She heard his feet turn away from her and his footsteps take him a short distance away from her right side. The sound of running water then filled her ears.

 

 _There’s a sink_ , Sansa thought, suddenly elated with the revelation. Maybe it meant they were in a house or an apartment, somewhere close to the city and not far for someone to hear her if she screamed—

 

The water cut off, and then his footsteps returned to her side. Sansa wasn’t sure what she was supposed to expect. She doubted he had just poured a glass for her to drink. The water had been running much longer than for just a glass worth.

 

And then, without any warning, he doused her in ice cold water from a bucket.

 

Sansa jolted against her will, gasping up towards the ceiling. It almost tore from her throat a scream, but the water stung more than it hurt. She managed to keep her composure. After so much screaming and yelling from earlier, her throat felt scratchy and raw because of it. She simply didn’t have the willpower to continue screaming on and on like that. Eventually, her voice would give out, and then all of its power would be gone. She didn’t know how much longer this might go on for her, and that single thought alone had the power to fill her with dread.

 

Thick, burly fingers grasped at her blindfold, ripping it off of her face. Squeezing her eyes shut, she expected a bright light to blind her vision, but when she slowly blinked them open, it was mostly darkness around her. Standing over her was a tall, shadowy figure, but his frame was very familiar to her. As his face came into focus, she had recalled him as the same man from earlier who had crashed into Gendry’s car, dragged her across the street, stepped on her hand, and shot Loras in cold blood. Sansa hadn’t heard his voice out on the road, but she had seen him plain enough in the bright flood of headlights to remember his face.

 

“You heard all of that conversation, didn’t you?” he asked her, calm as a summer breeze.

 

Sansa felt her chin almost tremble, but she controlled it to be still as she stared up at him. There was no point in lying, she thought. He would smell it on her, and she doubted very much he would be very forgiving for it. “Yes,” she admitted.

 

His eyes seemed to gleam and then narrow slightly in the lack of light, but there were many tall, long windows behind him. Though they were dirty and smeared with a cloudy film, street lights poured in from outside of them. Judging by the type of windows and the aging look of them, Sansa thought this wasn’t a house at all. It looked more like a warehouse of some sort, old and unused. _Abandoned_ , she thought.

 

“Good,” he said, and his deep voice seemed to resonate in the emptiness around them. He turned away from her and walked around the table. “I don’t like liars,” he told her. Sansa heard him grab for an object on a nearby counter. The sound of a metal scrape filled her ears, sending a shiver down her spine. “That’s one thing me and my brother have in common.”

 

Sansa gasped softly, her mouth falling open in shock. She knew who he was, but why was telling her this? The other man had told him not to link himself to her, and here he was telling her things he ought to be keeping to himself. _Gregor_ , she thought, recalling his name. He was Sandor’s older brother. As his list of crimes flooded into her thoughts, they became dark and frightening. Her body began to tremble against her better judgment. He was a murderer of innocent women and babies, not just men, and he was a rapist—and she was tied up, alone with him.

 

Her hands were above her head, and Sansa tried to think of a way to escape. She would not lie here like some helpless girl who couldn’t save herself while he—

 

A cold bite of steel grazed her throat, stilling Sansa in place.

 

Gregor slowly walked into her line of vision, his hand holding the knife moving with him, and his familiarity with Sandor became clear in that moment. His skin was not ruined like Sandor’s face from burn marks endured as a child, but they were brothers, and it showed. Gregor’s features were stronger, though, and more square and chiseled to definition. They had a likeness, and though there was no play of green and orange swirls of fire behind him, Sansa felt as though she was in the dream once more with the castle and a burning world around her.

 

“We’re going to go off script,” Gregor told her, holding the knife firmly in place. “What you heard earlier is not going to happen. You’re a pretty thing,” he said, drawing the blade of the knife slowly across the bare skin of her collarbone, “but he just wants to fuck you. Be the savior. Win your interest. It’s too late for that, though. You heard all of his plan, so it’s not going to work out, is it?” The knife drew lower to the collar of her blouse, pausing there. “I’ve got a better plan, and it works more to my interests.”

 

Sansa tried her best to control herself, taking in a deep breath to calm her nerves. She was not going to beg. He wasn’t going to grant anything she begged for him to do or not to do. _Just let me go_ , she could have said. _Don’t hurt me_.

 

But none of it was going to matter to him, none of it at all.

 

“What is that?” Sansa asked quietly, maintaining her composure.

 

Gregor withdrew the knife from her blouse, and Sansa wanted to sigh with relief, but she held back the desire. He glanced down at her legs, though, and walked down the length of the table until he was standing beside them. She felt the cold bite of steel against her right leg, the flat of the blade drawing along her skin.

 

“It was Ramsay who was supposed to grab you the first time,” Gregor said, “and he botched his job.” The knife continued to caress against her skin. “Tell me,” he urged her, “do you think he would have given in to his baser urges had he kept your sister for longer?”

 

Sansa knew of Ramsay’s baser urges, and she couldn’t stop the trembling of her nerves this time. It wasn’t Gregor’s method of operation, though.

 

 _He’s just trying to scare me,_ she told herself. _Don’t let him scare you, Sansa_.

 

“I don’t kn—”

 

The hand on her leg was like iron, gripping her in place. A spike of fear stabbed through her chest before a sharp pain cut itself into her calf, and Sansa’s whole body went rigid as she opened up her mouth to scream her heart out towards the ceiling. The sharp flat of the blade sliced across her skin, and agony filled her up as deep as her bones. Even when the knife was lifted from her skin, the burning didn’t stop. Tears stung her eyes, pouring from the corners, and Sansa turned her head away and squeezed them shut to try and block out the pain.

 

A rough hand grabbed her chin, forcing her face upright again. She kept her eyes squeezed shut, though, unwilling to look.

 

“Open your eyes,” Gregor commanded, but his voice too calm for what he had just done to her.

 

Sansa did not want to look, though. She did not want to see anything that he had to show her. She knew she did not want to see, but he squeezed her jaw tighter in his grip, and she had no choice but to comply and to look.

 

Slowly, she opened her eyes.

 

Raised above her in the dim light, he held the knife in his other hand, his thumb carefully pressed onto the blade to hold a scrap of dangling skin onto it.

 

Sansa was immediately sick, and he let go of her chin as she turned onto her side and vomited up the contents of her stomach over the edge of the metal slab. The throbbing in her leg was slowly dying down, but the cold air was like fire on the open wound. It burned and burned and burned, and Sansa emptied her stomach of each bitter fluid until she was dry coughing and no more would come up.

 

He left her alone as she lay there, trying her best to calm herself once more and regain her composure. Her body wanted to shake with convulsions, but she took deep breaths in and out to steady her nerves. It seemed as if they did not want to steady, though, and each involuntary convulsion that coursed through her body could not be stopped. _It’s the pain_ , she thought. It had to have been all of the pain. She was in shock from so much happening to her body, and it would not stop.

 

“Go down and watch the entrance,” Gregor called out.

 

Somewhere in her sickly haze, Sansa managed to turn her head to look near her feet towards the extending walkway beyond the enclosed area of the metal slab table and the many cabinets surrounding her. She could see the heads of various men cast in shadow as they turned away and headed out of sight. Sansa couldn’t count their numbers, but there were not that many of them from what she could see past her feet and above the decrepit cabinets and counters around her.

 

“And don’t shoot the pup when he comes!” Gregor shouted to them. “That one’s _mine_!”

 

Sansa drew backwards on the table as Gregor turned around again and looked at her. Instead of approaching her, he reached into his free pocket for an old flip phone and pulled it out. Gregor pressed one button on the keypad and lifted the phone to his ear. Sansa watched with trepidation, wondering who he was calling and why. Her heart began to speed up as she thought he was calling Sandor. She opened her mouth to yell, but when Gregor spoke into the phone, the first word from his lips proved her thoughts wrong.

 

“Renly,” Gregor said, his voice almost pleasant and familiar. “It’s been a long time.” There was a moment of silence, but it didn’t last long. “Your lover boy, the flower head, I finished what I started on him all those years ago. You can find his brains decorating the road in between Rosby and Iron if you want to go look . . . or you can come here and get your sweet revenge. 1362 River Row Way. I’ll be waiting.”

 

With that, Gregor hung up the phone with a resounding _clack_ in the silence as he flipped it shut. He glanced over at Sansa again, and she thought of rolling off the table and standing up to run, but her ankles were still bound together tight. She wouldn’t get far like this. Gregor would stop her before she could even get two feet away, and then he might skin another part of her body. He might cut off a finger or two. He might do even worse than that. Sansa couldn’t say what he was capable of because he was capable of anything. Anything and everything.

 

Gregor strode over to her, and before she could make a decision of what to do, he grabbed her by the throat and held fast, but he didn’t squeeze his fingers around her neck. He stared down at her, his piercing eyes as brutal as the knife that had been in his hands. Gregor let go of her neck with a shove and took the knife into his grip again, pressing it down onto her throat.

 

With his other hand, he lifted the phone and opened it up. Sansa watched as she trembled, his finger pressing down on another single button. Gregor brought the phone back to his ear as it rang distantly, though she could hear it. The pounding of her heart beat hard against her ribcage as if it threatened to break free, and the phone kept ringing distantly in the background. At first, there was no answer.

 

His seemingly unemotional face twitched above hers just then, and he ended the call with a single press of a button. Gregor redialed it, the knife jamming in more against her throat. Sansa wanted to swallow against a building lump as it choked her, but she was afraid of moving more than she had to. One wrong move, and he would cut her. She didn’t want to bleed to death out here. Sansa didn’t want to die. She had her whole life ahead of her. She had a life. She was going to go to college. She was going to have a more serious relationship with Sandor. She was going to watch her younger siblings all grow up around her. She was going to be there when Robb, Theon, and Jon all got married to women who were to be good for them. She was going to be there when they had children of their own, and she became an aunt to their boys and girls.

 

Maybe one day, if she ever became ready for it, she was going to become a wife and a mother of her own—but none of those days, none of them at all, were ever going to come true if Gregor’s knife dug any deeper into her flesh and nicked any artery, leaving her to bleed out all over the floor.

 

Sansa closed her eyes against his sour breath, praying for her life to be spared, no matter the cost.

 

Just then, someone answered on the other end of Gregor’s phone. Rustling filled Sansa’s ears from what seemed like a distance, even though Gregor was so close to her and the phone was not very far away from her either. She slowly opened her eyes.

 

Gregor was looking straight down into hers.

 

“ . . . Hello?” asked a groggy voice through the line. Sansa’s heart ached inside of her chest at the sound of his voice, and a pained expression crossed over her face as a glimmer of amusement flickered in Gregor’s eyes. If she had any more tears left in her, one might have slipped out just then, but Sansa felt dry and shriveled on the inside.

 

Gregor slowly took the phone away from his ear, lowering it to her mouth. Sansa bit her lips together, but Gregor pressed the knife in harder, drawing a drop of blood onto the blade.

 

“Sandor,” Sansa choked out, and she heard more rustling on his end. Suddenly, his voice became clearer through the line.

 

“Sansa?” Sandor called to her, his tone on edge. “Where are you? I thought you were still here.”

 

 _Say come and get me_ , Gregor mouthed silently above her. She drew her lips tightly together again, shaking her head, so Gregor dragged the knife lower, pushing the sharp tip against her collarbone and digging into the flesh.

 

“Sandor, come and get m-me,” Sansa choked out, feeling her eyes sting, but they were so dry. Gregor dug the knife in deeper, and she could not stop her scream.

 

“Sansa!” he yelled distantly, but so many miles separated her from Sandor. He was not right here, right now. Only she and Gregor were right here, right now.

 

Gregor pulled the phone away from Sansa’s mouth and leaned away from her, and he withdrew the knife from her bleeding collarbone, but he began to trace it slowly down her skin to the collar of her shirt.

 

“Hi, brother,” he said through the line, and Sansa could only imagine what was going through Sandor’s head on the other side. She could only imagine the look on his face. Sansa could only lie there and tremble, wishing she were physically stronger or wishing she had a weapon to protect herself with all on her own, but she had neither thing on her side. There was next to nothing she could do for her own self in this situation without help.

 

“If you want to save your lady love,” Gregor told him, “1362 River Row Way. I’ll be waiting, and so will she.”

 

Without saying anything else, Gregor flipped the phone shut. He looked down at Sansa almost with an appraising look in his deadened eyes. He drew closer again as the knife shimmered in his hand when he raised it up, its metal catching in the glare of the street lights that poured in the windows from outside. His looming shadow fell over her, casting Sansa in darkness as the light made a halo around his broad build.

 

“Now,” Gregor told her in a low voice, “where were we?”

 

 


	96. Seven Devils All Around Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Notes:** The “seven devils” are seven people in particular involved in the current orchestration of events and not necessarily present in the chapter itself, but their names are Oberyn, Obara, Nymeria, Tyene, Sarella, Gregor, and Petyr. I was also listening to Jóhann Jóhannsson’s “Prisoners” instrumental as mood music for this chapter, so if you want some good ambiance while reading it, I highly recommend it.

_* * *_

 

Somewhere in the room, a phone buzzed quietly on vibrate from the side pocket of a pair of pants. They were lying on the floor in a heap of straggled clothes. It buzzed and buzzed until there was no answer, and then the call went straight to voicemail. Silence filled the room once more, while Sandor slept on peacefully in his bed, ignorant of the phone call and the people that might be on the other end. After a moment, the phone rang again, the vibration causing it to fall out of the pocket and onto the floor. The sound was louder when it wasn’t muffled by thick denim, and Sandor finally stirred in his sleep, hearing the noise for the first time.

 

He sat up in bed, rubbing a hand over his face, and glanced over to find his bed empty. Surprised to not see Sansa in it, he turned towards the phone on the floor. Sandor got out of the bed quickly to pick it up, accepting the call as he grabbed his clothes, too. He brought the phone to his ear, returning to the edge of the bed with his clothes in his other hand and sitting down.

 

“Hello?” Sandor asked in a groggy voice, not recognizing the phone number. He wondered who would be calling him at this hour during the night that he didn’t know. It was silent, though. Sandor’s forehead knitted together with mistrust as he listened, waiting for a voice.

 

“Sandor,” Sansa’s voice choked out, and Sandor dropped the clothes in his hand. They fell to the floor, and he pushed himself up from the bed to stand.

 

“Sansa?” he called back. “Where are you? I thought you were still here.”

 

He waited for an answer, panicking when she didn’t respond right away, but her voice came through the line again, overwrought and full of fear. “Sandor, come and get m-me—”

 

Her words were followed with a scream.

 

“Sansa!” he yelled back, but there was no other answer from her. There was only the immeasurable silence on the other end until someone else picked up where she had left off.

 

“Hi, brother,” spoke a new voice, deep and familiar, and a cold slither of dread passed down his back. It settled into his stomach, empty and bottomless. He was frozen in place, unable to move, unable to breathe, holding it in as if it might somehow make him wake up from this bad dream. “If you want to save your lady love,” Gregor continued, “1362 River Row Way. I’ll be waiting, and so will she.”

 

The phone line clicked dead, and Sandor dropped his phone to snatch his clothes and pull them on as quickly as possible, fumbling in the process with hands that were calmer than they ought to have been. There were no thoughts in his head as he shoved on his shoes, no moment of doubt as he seized his phone, wallet, keys, and jacket. Sandor raced out of his apartment without locking the door, taking an elevator down to the ground floor before running out to his car on the curb. The air was too cold, biting at his lungs at he breathed it in, but he barely felt it.

 

Backing his car out proved to be his least conscious decision because he rammed the back end into another vehicle, and Sandor only looked back to make sure the road was clear before pulling out of the parking space like a mad man, swerving his way onto the street. Tires screeched into the night, and Sandor pulled out his phone from his pocket to select a familiar number from the list of contacts as he sped down the highway. He brought it to his ear as it rang, and he ran an empty red light without thinking twice about it.

 

“Hello?” Brienne’s voice rang through the line, and despite the temporary calm Sandor had experienced so far, his heart rate began to speed up again.

 

“Brienne,” he said tightly, “where are you?”

 

Brienne didn’t answer immediately, but then she said, “On the corner of Rosby and Iron. Why? Where are you, Sandor?”

 

That wasn’t far from where he lived. “Why are you on the corner of Rosby and Iron?”

 

“There was a car wreck,” Brienne replied. “A hit and run collision. Sandor, why are you—”

 

“Who was involved?”

 

After a short pause, Brienne answered. “I’m not answering that question over the phone. Are you driving?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Get here, and I’ll tell you,” she said.

 

Sandor threw his phone into the passenger seat without answering her, pressing his foot harder into the gas pedal as he sped down the streets. It wasn’t long until he came upon Rosby and Iron, but Sandor saw the flashing lights and the police tape before he saw anything else, and he had to slam the brakes with an audible screech to come to a full stop. He parked the car and jumped out of it, leaving the door hanging wide open, as he ran to the edge of the quartered scene.

 

Brienne was walking towards him, enthroned in a wash of red lights. She wore a coat, but beneath it there was a shimmery dress that reflected the light. She bent down, passing underneath the police tape, and Sandor came to a stop less than two feet away from her.

 

“I need your help,” he blurted out, “and I need it now. I don’t have much time—”

 

“Don’t you want to know about the accident?” Brienne inquired, her face looking quizzical. “Over the phone, you said—”

 

Sandor had already forgotten about what was said between them during the call. It was the last thing on his mind. He had been barely conscious of whatever it was he had said to Brienne over the phone. None of it had been important to him at the time. It was just mindless deflection to take his mind off of things until he reached her location, and now that he was here, none of it mattered still.

 

“Sansa is in trouble, and I need your help,” Sandor told her.

 

A light went off behind Brienne’s eyes, and she took a step forward. “Sansa was in the wreck,” Brienne said. “Her and Arya and Gendry. Gendry was driving the vehicle, and an unknown assailant rammed into them—”

 

A ringing filled Sandor’s ears, drowning out Brienne’s words. Blue lights meant police. Red lights meant medical help. Sometimes it meant death. Sandor pushed past Brienne, not hearing her protest, and ducked under the police tape to rush onto the scene. He saw the stranded police car on the road, open doors and black body bags on the ground glistening in the flashing lights. Sandor skidded to his knees beside one of them and pushed the medical officer aside to unzip the bag.

 

“Hey!” the man protested, but Sandor ignored him.

 

He was frozen in horror at the sight before him, of that known face that had often been his only friend in times when others had turned their backs on him. He was a young man with his whole life ahead of him, but his skin was cold and his eyes were dead, and his face was ruined with a severe point-blank gunshot wound to the forehead.

 

Sandor had never expected to feel this kind of loss, and he reached out to touch the boy’s head, his hand just barely grazing the brown curls.

 

“Someone _get_ this man off of the crime scene before he contaminates evidence!” a woman’s voice shouted out, and Sandor felt a pair of hands grab at his arms. He reeled back and punched the offending officer, raising a commotion amongst the scene. Sandor pushed himself to his feet, turning to face the oncoming officers. At their head was a shorter lady with silvery blonde hair in a black trench coat, and Sandor stared at her with a new sense of alarm as he recognized her face, his mouth falling open.

 

“ . . . Dany?” he asked in disbelief, and Dany’s shock was real as well, but her look quickly turned into one of fury.

 

“How many men do I have to explain myself to tonight?” Dany asked no one in particular as she stared down Sandor with ire. “What are you—”

 

“He’s with me,” Brienne swiftly cut in, appearing beside him. She was breathing faster as if she had run towards them. “Please, you’ll have to forgive him—”

 

“I don’t _need_ anyone’s forgiveness,” Sandor snarled, turning to glare at Brienne. “I need help. Sansa is missing—”

 

“How does he know about Sansa?” Dany interrupted, looking to Brienne as well.

 

“I don’t know,” Brienne said, shaking her head.

 

“I know where Sansa is, and I need help getting her back _alive_ ,” Sandor said in a low voice, barely getting the words out past gritted teeth. His anger dissipated briefly, though, as he remembered Arya and Gendry. “Arya,” he said, sounding more worried this time. “Gendry. Where are they?”

 

“The hospital,” Brienne informed him. “They’ll survive, though I don’t know the extent of their injuries.”

 

“Then we need to get Sansa,” Sandor said. “That’s all that matters. Give me a gun, and I’ll take you to her—”

 

“Give you a gun?” Dany shot back, her eyes wide with incredulity. “Give you a _gun_? A civilian with a police issued weapon? And we don’t even know if he’s an accomplice to this crime. Agent Mormont, handcuff him now—”

 

A tall man, though not nearly as tall as Sandor, with balding blonde hair strode towards Sandor with a sense of determined confidence in his steps, but Sandor backed away two steps as Brienne pulled her gun out from beneath her coat and held it out to Sandor. He grabbed the weapon, and various officers and agents drew their weapons at once, including Agent Mormont.

 

“Agent Dany,” Brienne tried to reason with the other woman slowly, “please ask everyone to lower their weapons. Sandor is not going to shoot anyone.”

 

Sandor didn’t move, holding out the gun in the same position from where he had grabbed it from, staring down Dany and her entourage at once. Dany’s face was tight with barely restrained fury as she looked between Sandor and Brienne, and finally, she lifted her chin higher before nodding her head, though she looked as if she might regret the decision.

 

“Agents,” Dany said, slowly looking back to Sandor, “you may lower your guns as soon as I say so. For now, keep them drawn. Do not fire unless this man fires first. Do I make myself clear?”

 

No one responded out loud, but Dany glanced amongst their heads as they all nodded silently in agreement to her command. At last, she broke away from the group to step forward. Dany tucked her own gun away as she walked towards them. When she reached Sandor and Brienne, both of her hands were at her sides and her chin was raised high enough to allow her to look into Sandor’s eyes.

 

“Tuck the gun away, sir,” Dany said in a low voice, low enough for only him and Brienne to hear, and Sandor slowly tucked the gun into his pants, thankful that Dany stood in front of him. She blocked him from the direct range of most of her men and women. “How do you know where Sansa Stark is?” Dany asked him, still keeping her voice low.

 

“My brother has her,” Sandor admitted, hating that they were wasting time like this. “He’s going to kill her, or do worse, if I don’t get there to save her now.” He swallowed past a newly building lump in his throat, finding it harder to speak.

 

Dany’s eyes trailed over his face. “I believe you,” she said, “and I’m coming with you. Your brother is Gregor Clegane. I know him. He is tied in my investigation, and he is also supposed to be in prison.” Dany looked over her shoulder. “Agent Mormont,” she called out, “pass Officer Brienne a gun.” As the agent in question fulfilled Dany’s request, she turned back to Sandor. “Is he alone at the location?”

 

“He has to be,” Sandor said, feeling despair set in suddenly. “This is about me. He wants to hurt me.”

 

“We don’t need a squadron, then,” Dany surmised. “Agent Mormont,” she called out again, “the three of us are going with Clegane here. Prepare a vehicle now.” Agent Mormont looked as though he thought to protest, but he decided against it and hurried off to fulfill her other command. Dany turned away from Sandor, following Agent Mormont’s steps with long strides. “Follow me,” she called over her shoulder to Sandor and Brienne.

 

Sandor followed with hesitation, though he looked over at Brienne. She glanced back at him, sharing a look that was part relief and part trepidation, but she took to Sandor’s side in a hurry. They made their way to the prepared vehicle Agent Mormont had running and ready for them, and Dany requested that they turn off the emergency lights. Agent Mormont followed her order, and he looked over the shoulder of his driver seat and between Sandor and Brienne in the backseat, quickly backing out of the parking spot on Rosby Street.

 

“What’s the address?” Dany asked from the front passenger seat.

 

“1362 River Row Way,” Sandor answered. It was impossible for him to forget it.

 

“That’s an abandoned lot by the pier,” Dany remarked. “An old rundown fishing warehouse. Discreet, but odd.”

 

“What’s odd about it?” Brienne asked as Agent Mormont tore through the streets towards the location Sandor had given them.

 

“The property may be old and no longer in use,” Agent Mormont responded this time from the driver seat, “but it’s still owned.”

 

“By who?” Sandor inquired, narrowing his eyes.

 

“Mayor Robert Baratheon,” Mormont replied, a sour tone to his voice while he spoke the name. “He bought it off of his brother, Stannis Baratheon, some years ago.”

 

“Stannis Baratheon?” Brienne asked, incredulous. “But he’s in politics, too, not fishing. What was he doing with an old fishing warehouse? Better yet, what does his brother do with it now?”

 

“Stannis used to fund an old friend of his, Davos Seaworth,” Mormont answered her, “until the area lost its pull in the business, and then they shut down that warehouse. That’s a good question, though, in regards to Robert.”

 

“Who are you investigating?” Sandor asked, but Agent Mormont didn’t answer his question. Mormont glanced over at Dany in the passenger seat beside him, saying nothing else.

 

“I think we’ve spoken enough,” Dany replied, and given the tone of her voice, Sandor didn’t push it. He looked off into the window, unable to calm his racing heart, until they reached the area of the pier and noticeable chill seeped into the car from the cracks. Out by the sea, the air was always colder thanks to the open breeze that pulled in from the chilly waters. This time of the year it was always worse than any other time because the winters of Kingsland were full of a biting chill and they knew snow here like they didn’t know further south.

 

Mormont cut off the vehicle’s lights while they were still on the street, though he brought the car to a slower speed than before.

 

As they slowed down even further and Mormont pulled a turn to bring the car into an empty back alleyway, Sandor looked up out of the window at a towering building to his right. He was afraid of being seen, but Mormont had taken a back way, and this section behind the building revealed that the warehouse had no windows on this side. Sandor looked up, up, and up, and he saw only riveted steel rising into the sky. Mormont brought the vehicle to a stop, turning off the engine.

 

“Are we ready?” Dany asked them all.

 

“I’m right beside you,” Mormont told her without hesitation, and Sandor looked to Brienne at his left. Brienne gazed at him, and though she tried to look calm on the outside, there was visible fear in her eyes.

 

“You can wait here,” Sandor told Brienne.

 

“No,” she said immediately, her features steeling against his suggestion. “Sansa is my friend. I won’t stay behind like some coward, hiding in a car.”

 

Before Sandor could say anything, Brienne opened her door and pushed it open to get out. Everyone followed her example, quietly shutting their doors behind themselves so as to not make any noise. Dany drew her gun once she was out, so did Agent Mormont. They led the way slowly towards the building, and Sandor followed them with Brienne right behind his trail. Sandor had pulled his gun out as well, though technically it was Brienne’s weapon, and he made sure the safety was off as they took to the side of the building, slinking along in the darkness.

 

Dany found a side entrance ahead of them. She grasped at the door handle, but it wouldn’t budge. “It’s locked,” she said. “If we go through the front, the hinges will squeal and announce our arrival. They’re on sliding frames—”

 

“Let me,” Sandor said, pushing ahead of Mormont. He tucked his gun away into his pants again. “Do you have something thin and sharp? A small knife or a few paperclips, anything like that.”

 

Each of them provided him with a few various things from their pockets. Sandor tried his best with what was given, and though it took a few minutes, he felt the lock give way with a familiar snap, and he opened the door. As he pulled out his gun again, Dany slipped ahead of him through the open doorway and Mormont followed close behind her again. Sandor walked in after them, and Brienne took up the rear, slowly closing the door after she was inside. It was a smart move in case the wind outside whipped the door shut, making a loud enough clamor to draw unwanted attention their way. It was the last thing they wanted to happen in a situation like this. Surprise was a better ally to have on their side.

 

As they made their way silently through the dark together, eyes peering in all areas and guns aimed in various directions, a sudden gunshot rang out loud and clear above their heads. All four of them ducked and aimed, looking for where it might have come from, but no one fired their weapons and no one saw anything.

 

“What was that?” Brienne asked quietly, but loud enough for them to hear her.

 

“I don’t know,” Sandor said. “I don’t see anything.”

 

“That wasn’t aimed at us,” Dany added. “Someone else is here.”

 

Another gunshot rang out in the warehouse, and this time they could tell it was an echo of something further away from them. Three more shots were fired, but it sounded as if they were all coming from different directions. Dany kept herself crouched low, but she hurried towards the end of the staircase, turning herself to look upwards at its ascent, the barrel of her gun aimed up, too. The rest of them followed her lead, and they heard more gunshots, hollering, and a man’s screams echo throughout the open space above. The sounds grew more furious. Sandor heard a woman’s voice call out like a thunderous growl, and a loud _bang_ filled the air.

 

Without hesitation, Sandor rose to his full height. He pushed past Mormont and Dany from where they crouched on the ground by the staircase, circling around its bend and running up the steps, even as the others tried to discreetly call out to him. His gun was drawn and aimed ahead of himself, though, and they weren’t going to stop him. He heard the others scrambling to hurry after him, but he was almost near the top by the time he heard their footsteps on the staircase behind him. The sounds of the fight were still ahead.

 

Sandor whirled to his right at the top of the open and railed platform to face the sight of a fight going on between a woman and a man. His gun was aimed right at them, but he couldn’t see their faces to know who was friend and who was foe or if they were both foes until the struggle led to the woman getting the upper hand. She twisted the arm of the man, bending his weapon out of the way. Hers had fallen to the grate below her feet, and it was in danger of being kicked over at any moment.

 

As the woman gained the upper hand, she looked up, spotting Sandor out of the corner of her eyes. She froze, and he froze, both of them staring at each other.

 

It was Obara Sand, one of the daughters of Oberyn Martell.

 

Her moment of shock was enough to be fatal, though. The man twisted in her grasp and punched her with his newly freed hand not holding his weapon, and he gained control of his gun hand again as well. A loud gunshot rang out, taking her in the chest, and Obara looked stunned before the man let go of her, letting her fall to the grate. Sandor fired a shot immediately, taking the man in the back. The man stumbled and fell, and Sandor hurried forward, but he wasn’t expecting the man to roll over and take aim and shoot.

 

Sandor took a hit in the arm, stumbling out of the way. Another gunshot rang in the air, and the fallen man took one to the head this time, collapsing permanently to the grate and not moving again.

 

Sandor looked over his shoulder, spotting Dany approaching with her gun out and both hands holding it steadily forward.

 

“Thank you,” Sandor managed to say, and Dany sidestepped towards him, not removing her eyes from ahead until Mormont rushed ahead of her, gun drawn, to check the body of the dead man. Finally, she looked at Sandor, but she didn’t lower her gun.

 

“You’re shot,” she stated matter-of-factly.

 

“You don’t say,” Sandor threw back, feeling the pain shoot up his arm. It was his dominant side, too, the one holding the gun.

 

“She’s dead,” Mormont called from the bodies.

 

Just as he spoke, more gunshots rang out ahead of them.

 

“You wait here,” Dany said.

 

“Fuck that,” Sandor spat, just as Brienne rushed over to his side. She ripped off a part of her dress from the bottom and wrapped it around his arm, tying it tightly. Sandor grimaced against the pain, but it was for the better.

 

“There,” Brienne said. “It will stop you from losing blood.”

 

Dany was already hurrying ahead of them with Agent Mormont at her side, but Sandor was not going to be left behind. He pulled himself from the wall, and he moved forward, though his gun wasn’t as steady as before.

 

“Is this wise, Sandor?” Brienne argued with him, right on his heels. “You should wait down here. You’re wounded—”

 

“He called _me_ ,” Sandor hissed, “not them.”

 

“Still, you’re not going to be much help for Sansa if you—”

 

Sandor twisted around to face Brienne. “Don’t tell me what to _do_ ,” he growled at her, and Brienne was taken aback. He turned back around to move forward once more, and several gunshots echoed throughout the air, louder than before. There was another body aside from the man and Obara. Another man dressed in black, his throat slashed and his eyes dead and empty.

 

They came to another set of stairs, and Dany and Mormont were nowhere to be seen. _They must have already climbed it_ , Sandor thought. With a sweating brow, he took the first step and then another, hearing Brienne’s footsteps just behind him. Sandor was using both hands on his gun because it helped him to hold it more steadily, but he had to remove one of them to wipe his forehead with the back of his hand. He didn’t want the sweat to get into his eyes and fuck with his vision, not at a moment like this where everything could hinge on a single moment and a single right or wrong move.

 

The sounds of fighting became more pronounced as they ascended the staircase. He returned both hands to his gun, and at the top of the stairs, Sandor took off to the right side to a wall that gave shelter. He peered around the edge as Brienne joined him, and Sandor saw another wall ahead, sitting like a block on its own. It didn’t reach the ceiling, and Dany was crouched on the side of it facing him. Off to the left, there was another such wall that Mormont had taken cover behind.

 

This level was made of solid floor, but there was a second staircase that led up to another floor somewhere ahead of them in the distance to the right. Sandor saw a whole slew of bodies scattered across this level of the warehouse past the spot where Dany and Mormont had taken cover, but he didn’t know if the two agents had killed them or if those men had died some time ago by the hands of someone else. If Obara was here, then Sandor was willing to bet that her younger sisters were here as well. Obara wouldn’t walk alone into a bloodbath without help, and Oberyn had been meaning to settle a score with Sandor’s older brother, Gregor, for years.

 

Someone opened fire in their direction, and Sandor took cover as Dany returned it with two shots. A second later, Mormont reached over the side of his cover and opened fire as well. Sandor heard no other shots from ahead, though, so he took a chance and peered over the edge. The crouching figure took fire, and it wasn’t aimed at him but at Mormont. When Mormont rose again to shoot back, Sandor took the opportunity given to him. He dove into the fray, taking a great risk and running headlong towards the staircase, even as Dany called out to him. He paid no mind to her protest and ran up the steps as Agents Dany and Mormont both distracted the assailant with extra gunfire in an attempt to help clear the way for him.

 

Until he reached the top, Sandor had no idea that Brienne had been following his footsteps. Shortly after he stopped on the next floor, Brienne appeared right there at his side, breathing heavily, her gun still drawn and aimed ahead of her. Their shoulders brushed while she stood too close, and Sandor glanced over at her as she looked at him, too. Without saying a word, they silently acknowledged that they were in this together. She had his back, and he had hers.

 

A deep voice hollered out from somewhere above their heads, drawing Sandor’s attention away from Brienne to look up through the grate. He saw two distinct figures advancing on each other. One was tall but slender, and he moved quickly like a snake. _Oberyn Martell_ , Sandor thought, recognizing the man’s face and long black hair from below. The other man was a towering mass of muscle, wide from shoulder to shoulder, and his boots rang heavy against the grates. Steel clanged beneath his shoes as he walked, echoing throughout the air.

 

 _Gregor_.

 

The name came unbidden to his thoughts, and Sandor gritted his teeth against the whispered thought of his brother’s given name. They had been fighting each other for some time. This was not the beginning of the duel for them. How long it had been, Sandor couldn’t say. He could tell it had been a while, though, by the unsteady way in which they walked across the steel grating, the heavy breaths they both expelled from their lungs, and how they lowered their weapons as they circled each other like predator after prey. It was as if both men needed the moment worth of rest before charging headlong into blade and steel. They must have run out of bullets or come to the decision to fight without them. Somehow, though, Sandor could not imagine Gregor being as honorable as that. A lack of bullets seemed far more likely to be the reason for no guns.

 

In Gregor’s hands was a weapon akin to a machete but somewhat larger in size, and Oberyn brandished a long but thin steel pole. Where he had gotten the pole from, Sandor had no idea, but it seemed to have once been a part of the fixtures in this abandoned warehouse. Sandor raised his gun, thinking about shooting at Gregor from the bottom, but there was too much risk of getting a ricochet bullet back at his skull. Brienne laid her hand against Sandor’s forearm, slowly urging against it. He glanced over at her, and Brienne shook her head wordlessly. A sigh escaped his lips, but Sandor allowed it, lowering his arms back down to his sides. Brienne said nothing and neither did he, and Sandor looked up again as Oberyn spoke above them.

 

“You raped her,” Oberyn called out, his voice deceptively low. “You murdered her. You killed her children.” Gregor charged at the slighter man, swinging his weapon through the air with an arc. Oberyn danced to the side, avoiding the hit. Oberyn then struck outward using the steel pole in his hands, hitting Gregor in the belly with the end of it, though it seemed to have no effect on the bigger man. Gregor reached out to snatch the pole, but Oberyn pulled it back to himself with quick hands.

 

“You raped her. You murdered her. You killed her children,” repeated Oberyn, his voice full of more fervor this time, and he struck out another blow at Gregor from the side. Gregor grunted at the hit, but nothing more, and turned slowly to face Oberyn.  He charged at the smaller man, but Oberyn jumped to the side and avoided the charge with ease.

 

Gregor moved quicker to match him, and he struck out again at Oberyn. Oberyn deflected the strike of the machete with his pole. Metal screamed against metal, and Oberyn leapt back as Gregor advanced. The blade slipped off the steel pole with a shriek. As the two of them continued to duel, Sandor looked off to survey the area around them and to see where the next set of grate stairs led off to on the floor above his head. He saw it to the right and not the left, but he also noticed something else.

 

Off in a far left corner, Sandor saw Tyene Sand. She stood tense, but she seemed to sway back and forth as she watched the combat. In her hands she held no gun, but a sharp curved blade. Sandor saw two gun holsters on her belt, though, and yet both were empty. He looked to the right and spotted another figure, this one crouched instead of standing, surveying the scene as if ready to pounce as well. Nymeria Sand held the four fingers and the thumb of one hand to the solid floor beyond the grate where she crouched, eyeing the scene with more intensity than her sister.

 

A clash rang through the air, drawing Sandor’s attention forward again. Oberyn struck fiercely against Gregor, hitting the enormous man upside the head with the blunt edge of the steel pole in his hands. The crunch of metal against bone sounded sickeningly above, and Gregor grunted at the impact, stumbling as he lost his balance.

 

“You raped her,” Oberyn called out, striking at Gregor’s head again and issuing forth a second grunt of pain from the larger man. “You murdered her,” he added before he struck out with the end of the pole, ramming it into Gregor’s stomach. Oberyn reacted fast as Gregor reached out to seize the steel pole in his fit of fury, and the smaller man managed to pull back just in time to prevent Gregor from wresting his weapon away from him. “You killed her children,” Oberyn shouted, sending another strike at Gregor’s head.

 

Gregor fell to his knees, and Oberyn moved to strike again. It was just a feint on Gregor’s behalf, however, and he reached up quickly—much faster than Oberyn anticipated—and grasped the end of the pole to yank it away from Oberyn. One of Oberyn’s daughters intervened, charging into the fray. She stabbed her curved blade into Gregor’s back, and Gregor let go of the pole to swing around and slam his arm into her body, causing the small woman to fly a few feet away from him. Tyene hit the grates hard, the wind knocked out of her and a few ribs in her chest most likely broken from the impact. It saved her father’s life, though.

 

Nymeria rushed forward to her sister as Gregor rose to his feet, Oberyn backing away from the bigger man as he held the pole sideways in a defensive maneuver. Gregor reached back and ripped the blade from his back, his shirt drenched in black blood, but otherwise he seemed mostly unaffected by it. “It’s going to take more than just a scratch, snake,” Gregor said, and he threw Tyene’s bloody blade at her father. Oberyn barely managed to deflect the blade with his pole, sending it skittering across the grates with a loud clamor.

 

“You raped her.” Oberyn struck out a feint towards Gregor’s belly, but Gregor moved too slowly to be able to grasp it. “You murdered her.” He lunged the pole at the space between Gregor’s eyes, causing the larger man to bend back clumsily to avoid a hit. “You killed her children,” Oberyn shouted, and the pole collided sideways into Gregor’s shoulder and knocked him off balance again. Gregor’s own blade was too short for the distance kept between them due to the length of the steel pole Oberyn brandished as his weapon. Oberyn had a good two to three feet of space because of it, and he kept his distance—a smart move, considering Gregor’s size by comparison. If Gregor got his hands on Oberyn, he was a dead man.

 

“You raped her. You murdered her. You killed her children.” Oberyn parried a cut from Gregor’s blade, and then he danced to the left to avoid another swing. “You raped her. You murdered her. You killed her children.” Gregor attempted to charge the smaller man, but Oberyn skipped to the side and circled around his back. “You raped her. You murdered her. You killed her children.”

 

“ _Enough!_ ” Gregor bellowed. He struck furiously at Oberyn, hacking downward with his blade, but Oberyn blocked it with the pole. Metal shrieked against metal until Oberyn was forced to take two steps back. “You shut your bloody mouth,” Gregor warned, tired of the games.

 

“You raped her,” Oberyn said, undaunted, and he struck out once more with the flat end of the pole.

 

“ _SHUT UP!_ ” Gregor roared. He charged headfirst towards Oberyn. There was a new fury in his movements, faster and more savage than before. Gregor used his strength to his advantage, backing Oberyn into a corner against the wall. Oberyn had to parry and slide out of the way, rolling on the ground and nearly losing his weapon as he barely managed to escape the assault. Gregor’s blade sunk into the wall, and he ripped it out. Oberyn leapt back to his feet, taking the steel pole with him, raising it once more.

 

“Elia,” Oberyn called out to him. “You raped her. You murdered her. You killed her children. Now say her name.”

 

“You talk too much,” Gregor told the other man. “Did you come here to fight me or talk to me?”

 

“I will hear you say it,” Oberyn said. “She was Elia. Now say her _name_.”

 

Gregor said nothing but a growl, and he charged at Oberyn. Steel flashed against steel, screaming as sparks flew off the metal. Oberyn almost lost his footing, but Gregor was swinging like a madman, tiring himself out with each savage sweep of his blade. Oberyn parried each thrust and cut with the tip of the pole, skipping always out of the way just in time.

 

In all of the fury of his blind attack, Gregor wore himself down and grew slower. Oberyn used it to his advantage, striking Gregor upside the head again. With the crack of bone ringing throughout the air, Gregor collapsed to one of his knees on the steel grating. His palm hit it, preventing him from going down all of the way. Oberyn swung a second hit at Gregor’s head, sounding another _crack_ throughout the air.

 

“Say it!” Oberyn demanded, his voice rising with his victory. He circled around Gregor, thrusting the pole out and striking Gregor behind the other knee. “Elia! Her name was Elia!” Oberyn drew the pole back, though he held it up, ready for another thrust. “ _Say it!_ ”

 

Blood was pouring from the wound in Gregor’s head. He tried to move, but his knee buckled beneath him, and he swayed, reeling from his injuries. Oberyn had made a full circle around Gregor, and now he stood before the man with his pole aimed at Gregor’s chest.

 

“ _ELIA!_ ” Oberyn cried out, thrusting the steel pole into Gregor’s chest. Gregor fell backwards with a crash into the grate, blood dripping thickly through the holes in the steel flooring.

 

Sandor never thought he would see this day.

 

Oberyn picked up the fallen blade, circling around Gregor. He still held the pole in his other hand, using it like a walking stick instead of a weapon, and then he stood beside Gregor’s fallen form with both.

 

“You will say her name before you die,” Oberyn told him, holding out the length of steel towards Gregor’s face, “or I will hunt you down to the bottom of Hell.”

 

Gregor tried to move. He might have even tried to speak, but he was too weak and bleeding too much. Sandor could see the blood pouring more freely through the grate, and all of it belonged to Gregor.

 

Oberyn moved closer, jabbing at Gregor’s chest with the tip of the pole. “ _Say the name!_ ” he shouted, and then he threw the pole aside, raising the blade above the other man’s face as he placed a foot onto Gregor’s chest. Sandor didn’t know if Oberyn intended to jab downward and sink the blade into Gregor’s face or if he intended to slit Gregor’s throat.

 

Either way, Sandor would never know.

 

Gregor’s hand shot out, grabbing Oberyn behind the knee, and yanking the man from his standing. The blade clattered to the steel grate, and Gregor rolled on top of Oberyn, crushing the other man beneath his weight. Sandor felt it like a blow to his chest, knocking the breath out of him, and before Brienne could stop him, Sandor ran for the stairs as Nymeria wailed, “ _No!_ ”

 

“Elia,” Gregor said loud enough for everyone to hear, his deep voice resonating throughout the empty warehouse. Sandor reached the top of the stairs, his foot sliding on something slick and causing him to lose his balance as he fell to his knees. Nymeria collided into him in her attempt to run to her father, having left her unconscious sister on the ground some feet away.

 

“I killed her screaming brats,” Gregor continued as Nymeria steadied herself by grasping Sandor’s shoulders. Both of them looked towards the two men lying on the floor as Gregor thrust a hand at Oberyn’s face, jabbing his large fingers into her father’s unprotected eyes as Oberyn screamed in agony. Nymeria shoved herself off of Sandor, but her ankle twisted as she stumbled backwards, and she fell to the ground on one knee. “ _Then_ I raped her.” Gregor raised his fist and rammed his fist into Oberyn’s mouth, making a ruin of it. “Then I smashed her fucking head in. Like this,” Gregor hissed, and he raised his huge fist again, smashing it down into Oberyn’s face with a sickening _crunch_.

 

Nymeria screamed in a tear-filled rage, shoving herself to her feet and charging at Gregor. Sandor tried to grab her arm to stop her, but she slid past him. It was only then that Sandor realized he had dropped his gun, and Brienne was there, her weapon raised and aimed at Gregor Clegane, but she couldn’t fire. Nymeria had leapt onto Gregor’s back, pulling out her dagger and driving it home right into Gregor’s shoulder. Brienne tried to look for an opening, but there was none available without risking a shot at Nymeria.

 

Gregor pushed himself onto his feet, but he turned his body, putting Nymeria between him and Brienne’s gun. Just then a gunshot rang out, and Brienne went stumbling away from Sandor. The gun slipped from her fingers as she collapsed to the floor. Horrified, Sandor looked to the stairs, but he saw no one. As another gunshot was fired towards him, Sandor ducked and rolled out of the way. The sound of Brienne’s gun clanging down the stairs rang through the hollow of the empty warehouse, and Sandor scrambled to look for a weapon as he rolled over onto his stomach—something, anything. His gun. Where was his gun?

 

As he looked up, Gregor swung in a circle with Nymeria on his back. He grasped her by her long black hair and yanked hard before charging backwards into the railing at the edge. Nymeria was crushed between Gregor’s body and the metal rail, crying out in pain, and he stepped forward. Gregor seized her arm, ripping her from his back and yanking the woman to her feet.

 

“You will join your father soon,” Gregor said, and he hoisted Nymeria into the air as if she weighed nothing—and then he threw her over the edge.

 

She screamed until she hit the bottom, and then all was silent.

 

Sandor looked around quickly, scrambling backwards and climbing to his feet. There was a blade not too far away. He dove for it as a shadow descended into his peripheral vision, and a hand thrust out, grasping Sandor by the neck with a vice grip. He swung blindly, cracking his balled fist against the side of Gregor’s injured skull. His brother roared out his anguish, loosening his hold enough on Sandor to allow him to wrench free of Gregor’s hand.

 

Bending down, Sandor scooped up the blade, but he had no idea how to use it. He could barely chop wood with an axe, let alone fight his own brother with a machete. Gregor came at him quick, and Sandor swung the blade outward. Gregor was smart enough to back up, missing the swing, and then he charged again at Sandor.

 

He was backing Sandor into a corner.

 

Quickly, Sandor dove to the side, keeping the machete in front of him to ward off Gregor, but his brother kept coming at him. Sandor hacked and swung, but none of it made any difference. He was only wearing himself out, and the most he had accomplished was a nick on Gregor’s arm. Gregor thrust out his hand, grasping Sandor by the wrist of the hand that held the blade, and twisted it. Bone cracked, and Sandor hollered out as the machete clamored to the steel grate. He swung a punch at Gregor, hitting his brother in the chest, but for all the good it did him, he might as well have pulled Gregor into a loving embrace.

 

Gregor rammed his head into Sandor’s face, and a blinding pain paralyzed him as the sound of his nose breaking filled his ears. White light stunned his vision, and Sandor lost his balance, collapsing into Gregor’s awaiting arms. His brother caught him, holding him close as if he were a baby. Sandor felt a hand in his hair, and Gregor gripped a handful of it into his fist, pulling Sandor’s head back to bring them eye to eye as hot blood poured from Sandor’s nose down his mouth and onto his chin.

 

“I taught you a lesson once, baby brother,” Gregor spoke with a low, rumbling voice, “but now it’s time to finish it—”

 

Gregor’s hands seized him more tightly all of a sudden, and Sandor felt it as if a heavier weight was leaning into him. Gregor let go of him, and Sandor collided to the grate without his brother’s support to hold him up. His head swam with vertigo, and the world tilted and swayed sickeningly before his vision. Turning his head in the right direction, he tried to look for Gregor in his line of sight, but his brother had turned around to face something different.

 

Sandor saw Gregor raise a body one foot above his head, his hands clasped tight around the woman’s throat as he strangled the life out of her. Her skin darkened to a grotesque purple, her eyes wide and bulging, as golden wisps of blonde hair swayed loosely about her shoulders as she twitched in Gregor’s grasp. The light went slowly out of her eyes. Her hands, clasping onto Gregor’s, lost their grip and slipped from his wrists to fall to her sides. Tyene’s face was still as her eyes stared over Gregor’s shoulder, unseeing into the void.

 

When Gregor was satisfied that she was dead, he dropped her body to the steel grate with a clamor and turned around to face Sandor again.

 

Sandor saw the curved blade protruding from Gregor’s back, and he stumbled as he walked towards Sandor. Sandor rolled over, finding himself beside Oberyn’s pole, and he grasped it, propping it up against the grate and aiming it at Gregor’s chest. He thrust outward with the pole, using all of his strength, and Gregor fell back, though he did not lose the ground beneath his feet.

 

Using the pole as leverage, Sandor pulled himself to his feet. He shoved the pole into Gregor and pulled it back, stumbling away and looking once more for one of the blades. He needed something sharp. Sandor needed a real weapon to kill his brother with. A fucking pole wouldn’t do it. He couldn’t see his gun. Sandor stopped to face Gregor, shoving the pole point out towards Gregor’s chest again, and Gregor stumbled this time, losing his balance, and collapsed to his knees.

 

Sandor gripped the pole hard with both hands and thrust it with all of his might.

 

Gregor fell back first to the grate, gasping a last gurgling breath, as blood filled his mouth and the blade lodged into his blade sank further into him from the fall. He fell sideways because of the hilt sticking out, toppling heavily to the grate.

 

Sandor stared at his brother’s fallen body, unsure if he should believe his eyes. Holding the pole outward with both hands, he waited for some comeback from Gregor, but there was none. Gregor’s mouth opened and closed like a fish as if he were trying to speak, but none sound save a wet gurgle filled the silence. Gregor tried to move using his hands, but his body was too heavy and his arms were too weak as the life seeped out of his wounds and poured below him, falling through the holes in the grate.

 

Suddenly, Sandor dropped the pole. It clattered against the steel below, and he turned to look at his surroundings, stumbling as he took his first step. With the adrenaline of the fight for his survival gone, all of his strength and energy had vanished with it. He stood still for a moment, closing his eyes to stop the swaying of the world, until some of the wooziness passed him by. When he felt better again, Sandor opened his eyes and walked forward a step, and then two, and then three. He reached a wall and used that as support, leaning into it as the steel grating below his feet became solid floor.

 

“Sansa?” he called out, his hand flat against the wall as he listened for a response in the silence. There was nothing.

 

Sandor pushed forward, sliding himself along the wall. Realizing the blood that covered his lips and chin, he wiped his sleeve over his face in an attempt to clean it. His palms returned to the wall, guiding his way into an area of old cabinets and counters. Everything seemed blurry, but there was a metal table in the center of it, and Sandor pushed himself from the counter to fall against the table, hands grasping at chilled metal that barely budged and kept him upright.

 

There was a body on the table.

 

Sandor reached out with his hand, laying it on one of the legs. He pulled back quickly when he realized there was skin missing, flayed off of the muscle below. His stomach churned with nausea at the sensation on his hand, but he reached out again, grasping the opposite leg this time and gripping it more firmly. It was ice cold and still.

 

With much effort, he pushed around the corner of the table, using both hands to hold him up. He stumbled as he went, nearly losing his footing on the slick floor. A foot around the corner, though, he reached out again, touching the edge of the skirt with hesitant fingers. He couldn’t look at the face. Not yet. Slowly, though, his tremulous hand extended outward to touch the hem of the fabric, and he just barely pinched it between two fingers before lifting it upward along her thigh an inch or two.

 

Cold, sticky blood got onto his fingers, and Sandor let go of the skirt too quickly as he yanked back from her. He lost his balance as he fell backwards, collapsing into the counter before he fell to the floor. He barely felt the jab into his back. He was numb to the freezing floor below his fingertips. His lungs drew in a deep, shaky breath as his chest was wracked with heavy sobs, and he bent forward as a surge came up his throat and vomit left his mouth to spill onto the ice cold tiles below.

 

His palm was cold against the tiles. That was all he could think of, all he could process. _This is my fault_ , he thought. _My fault_ . . .

 

Sandor stared at the tiles until he realized he was staring at a pile of vomit with droplets of blood falling down to them from his nose. Looking up, he wiped his sleeve against his mouth and his nose again, soaking up the blood that still fell from his nose. Putting his hands against the floor, he pushed himself back to his feet. He was steadier this time. His feet were stronger. His head felt a little clearer than before, a crystal cold sort of clarity.

 

Grasping the edge of the cold metal table, Sandor looked down at the body that laid there. His eyes trailed up her body to her auburn hair bunched around her shoulders in a mess, and then to her face at last.

 

It was Sansa.

 

There was no mistaking her. There was no confusion, no doppelganger. She was pale and unmoving, her lips dry, cracked, and just barely separated to show two teeth hiding behind them. It looked like there was no breath from her lungs, and Sandor reached out a tremulous hand to touch her hair with unsteady fingers, gliding them over her soft tresses. Even in such a tangled mess, her hair was still beautiful. She was still beautiful. Out of some desperate last measure of hope, he pressed two fingers to her neck to check for a pulse point.

 

She didn’t look like she had one, but he would try, anyway.

 

Whether it was real or a figment of his imagination, Sandor felt a flutter against his fingertips. Quickly, he pulled them back, and then he slid both of his arms underneath her body to hoist her into his arms. Sansa was cold and clammy, but she fell over his shoulder easily as he moved her there. It would be the easiest way to carry her. He needed his arms free because he wasn’t going back the way he had come to get here. If there were more men with guns, he wasn’t risking the way back down through the building.

 

Old warehouses like this often had fire escapes, and Sandor made his way over to the windows with Sansa thrown over his shoulder. He peered through the foggy, dirty glass, and then he grasped the bottom notches on the window with the thickest frame and pushed it up. It screeched from old age and disuse, but it came up all the same. Once he propped it open, Sandor stuck his head out to look over the ledge.

 

There was a fire escape hugging the warehouse. Sandor had to take Sansa off of his shoulder to place her onto the grate outside of the window before he could crawl out of it himself. A biting wind whipped through the air, stinging clarity into Sandor’s eyes and mind. The sharp cold awakened his senses, fought off the world-spinning feeling he had gained from all of his injuries. Picking up Sansa to place her back over his shoulder, Sandor was careful as he made the descent on the fire escape. It was only a few stories, and there wasn’t far to go. He just had to get to the bottom, and then he had to get to the vehicle.

 

If there was still a pulse and a breath in her, Sansa needed a hospital. She needed a hospital, or she was going to die.

 

By the time Sandor made it down to the bottom of the fire escape, his hands were frozen from grasping iced over metal rungs and railings the whole way down. A nervous shake had developed in his muscles. Once he stepped foot off of the fire escape, he lowered Sansa from his shoulder back into his arms. He could hug her to his body more easily this way to keep her warm. There wasn’t a jacket on her shoulders. There weren’t even shoes on her feet, just bloody white socks.

 

Sandor ambled around the building slowly, finding he could not move as fast as he wanted to. His own jaw was chattering against the cold as the wind picked up and blew stronger. Out here by the sea, it always blew stronger as well as colder. Sandor hugged Sansa’s body closer to his chest as he turned around the corner of the warehouse. He was on the side of it now, and they had parked the police car in the back alleyway. He just had to get her into the backseat, and then he could drive her to the nearest hospital. He would break every speed limit, red light, and stop sign on the way there. They could chase him down with sirens, and he wouldn’t stop for anything until he had pushed past the doors of the emergency entrance with Sansa in his arms. He wouldn’t stop until she was safe again. He wouldn’t stop until she was warm again. He wouldn’t stop until the color had returned to her cheeks and a smile to her face, a breath to her lungs and a pulse beating strong in her veins.

 

As he came around the corner of the old fishing warehouse between its side and the back alleyway, Sandor had looked down at Sansa’s face in his arms instead of looking to see where he was going.

 

“ _Freeze!_ ” a voice called out above the wind.

 

Sandor froze, obeying the command, his right foot still raised at the toes. It had not yet come down to crunch the snow beneath his boot, and he looked up from Sansa’s face to see who had stopped him and why. He had come here with two agents and an officer of the law at his side. There was no need for anyone to stop him, anyone to suspect him, anyone to—

 

Sandor stared down the barrel of a loaded gun twenty to twenty-five feet away from him, and beyond that gun, was the face of Jaime Lannister.

 

Sandor blinked at the incredulity of it all. He did not know what to say or what to do. He had no gun, and if he did, Lannister would probably just shoot him on principle. He wasn’t a copper anymore, but they had bad blood that ran black between them for years. Lannister wasn’t lifting that gun, and Sandor wasn’t just going to put Sansa down into the freezing snow and walk away from her.

 

She needed a hospital, and he had to get Jaime Lannister to see that.

 

“She needs a doctor, Lannister,” Sandor said, his voice trembling from the cold.

 

Jaime sucked the inside of his cheeks inward, glaring his eyes at Sandor. His gaze fell to Sansa’s limp body in Sandor’s arms. Sandor saw the gun in Lannister’s hands quaver as he looked down at Sansa, but whether it was from the cold like Sandor or because of some inner indecision remained to be seen. Jaime raised his eyes back to Sandor’s face, but he didn’t lower his gun.

 

“I can see that, Clegane,” Jaime managed to speak, but his voice was shaking. It wasn’t because of the cold. “Tell me, was it worth it?”

 

Sandor was floored. “What?”

 

“What you _did_ to her,” Jaime snapped, nodding his head towards Sansa’s lifeless body in Sandor’s arms. “Was it _worth_ it?”

 

“I haven’t done _any_ —”

 

“I tracked you here,” Jaime revealed hastily. “I have a friend at the department. He pulled some strings for me to get me access to the GPS locator in your phone. I followed you here, and they said Brienne came this way with some agents.” He was shaking worse than before now. “Is she inside?” Jaime asked quietly, his voice barely audible above the wind. “Did you _shoot_ her, Sandor? Did you _shoot_ her when she found out what you are?”

 

“You’re fucking _mad_ ,” Sandor snarled, and he advanced a step, but he heard a _click_ on Jaime’s gun and he stopped in his tracks.

 

“Ah ah _ah_ ,” Jaime warned. “One more step, and I put a bullet right between your eyes and into your brain pan.”

 

“She needs a _hospital_ , Lannister,” Sandor found himself saying, pleading with the last person he ever expected to be pleading with for anything. “Please, let me take her.”

 

“So you can run off and dump the body where no one can find it?” Jaime asked, waving his gun towards Sandor. Jaime was barely holding it together himself. He was shaking, and he couldn’t keep his head or his body still. He was moving too much. For a man holding a gun on someone, he was moving way too much. “You think I’m that stupid? Dispose of the body, and who’s going to believe the disgraced officer? You can just come after me next—”

 

“She needs a _hospital_ —” Sandor felt tears building in his eyes. Every second was a lost minute, and each lost minute was a lost hour.

 

“You think I can’t see that?” Jaime replied. “Go on,” he added, waving the gun at Sandor. “Put her down.”

 

Sandor glanced down at the snow on the ground in disbelief.

 

“Put,” Jaime enunciated, “her. Down. Now.”

 

Slowly, Sandor bent down onto one knee. He lowered Sansa’s body to the snow unwillingly, knowing what the chill could do to her already fragile body. Sansa was in no state to be lying in snow, but he couldn’t stop Lannister. Sandor didn’t have a choice.

 

Incapable of stopping himself, he reached out to brush her hair away from her forehead, his fingers grazing along her temple.

 

“Stop _touching_ her,” Jaime hissed. “Get up! _Get up now!_ ” he hollered.

 

Sandor pushed himself onto his feet again, glancing up at Jaime as he rose to his full height. Jaime still had the gun pointed at Sandor. The barrel was aimed right at his head, and Jaime was an expert marksman. He never missed a shot that he meant to take.

 

“Lift your hands,” Jaime instructed, and Sandor didn’t want to obey, but he still didn’t have a choice in the matter. As gradually as possible, he raised his arms into the air. “Okay, that’s good. Now, take a step back,” Jaime added further.

 

Sandor drew in a tremulous breath and took a step back as instructed.

 

“One more,” Jaime said, still aiming the gun at Sandor’s head.

 

Sandor took one more step back as carefully as possible to not to startle Jaime and make him accidentally pull the trigger.

 

“Okay, that’s good,” Jaime repeated himself.

 

Sandor stopped. His chest was quaking, though whether it was from the cold or having to leave Sansa in the snow, he wasn’t sure. Maybe it was both.

 

“You know,” Jaime began idly, his voice quivering, “I almost liked you, Sandor. I almost thought you were a decent human being . . . ”

 

“What changed?” Sandor asked, not knowing if he even cared to hear the answer to that question. He wasn’t even angry at Jaime anymore. He was just cold—cold and alone and afraid of what might happen next. A silence stretched between the two of them as they stared at each other across twenty feet of empty space and cold white snow, and then Jaime answered him at last.

 

“I realized you weren’t,” he simply said.

 

Across the snow, Jaime pulled the trigger.

 

 


	97. The Sun Sets Fast These Days

_* * *_

 

Through the windshield of the car, he stared ahead at the expansive grounds of the estate. The lower level gate was shrouded in green shrubbery and laced with strings of golden Christmas lights, and black lamp posts adorned each side of the long walkway that led up to the front entrance of the estate house. Lights shone out from the windows with thinly veiled curtains, and a golden glow seemed to lay over everything in sight, though the glow was dim and shadows still crept over the land. It was a picturesque scene of tranquility and wealth. As he stared at it, he could feel his blood beginning to boil beneath the surface. At first, it was just a simmer, but the longer he stared, the worse it became.

 

A delicate snowfall had begun to trickle down from the sky. With a flick of his wrist, he turned on the windshield wipers to brush away the offending pieces of ice. He waited there in the silence of his vehicle, his phone resting on top of his right leg. It had not yet rung. He was waiting for it to ring. Any moment now, it would ring, and he would receive the answer he had been waiting for. Patience was not one of his virtues, but for tonight, it would have to be. A vehicle passed by slowly on the road, their headlights shining dim into the night. He turned his head and watched them pass, the car turning around the curved bend at the end of the road and continuing on its path to wherever it was going.

 

His phone began to vibrate on his leg. The ringer was turned off to avoid making any unnecessary noise that might draw attention to him. He glanced down at his lap, picking it up, and raised his eyes back to the house as he answered the call and lifted the phone up to his ear.

 

“Yes?” he asked simply through the line. As he saw a shadow pass across one of the windows on the house’s second story, he narrowed his eyes at it, tilting his head to the left.

 

“There were only three,” the voice answered. “Everything is clear, sir.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“Where is he?” Renly asked, staring at the window which had shown a shadow.

 

“Second story,” the voice replied, “in his study.”

 

“What is he doing?”

 

“Reading a newspaper,” answered the voice. “Smoking a pipe. Drinking hot tea.”

 

“How can you tell it’s hot?”

 

“It’s steaming,” the man replied.

 

“All right, Hotah,” Renly said. “Thank you.”

 

He hung up the call. Pocketing his phone, Renly pushed open the car door and stepped out into the cold. It was freezing, and unshaped snowflakes fell onto his clothes, but the hood on his head helped to keep him warm as well as the gloves on his hands. He quietly shut the car door without making a sound, and then he strolled towards the front gate. It was already open, awaiting him.

 

Walking through the grounds to the front door was like walking through a little garden paradise in the middle of night. The dark shadows all around were made deeper by the faint glow of the lanterns in the lamp posts, and he made his way across a cobblestone walkway to the front steps. Up the front steps, he made it to the great wraparound porch that adorned the house. He reached out for the door handle and twisted it. It opened easily, no lock to prevent him from entering the house. Everything was perfect. Everything was timed just right.

 

Renly stepped inside of the house, silently shutting the door behind himself. The hallway was drenched in the same warm yellow glow as the grounds of the front yard. As he slowly stepped forward, Renly reached into the backside of his pants and grasped the handle of a long barreled pistol that was tipped with a silencer. He carefully raised it front of himself, holding the gun steady with both hands as he surveyed the floor through each open doorway. As much as he believed he could trust Areo Hotah, Renly was going to make sure the way was clear before he rushed forward into anything that could very well be a trap.

 

 _Trust no one_ , echoed his thoughts, as Renly stepped sideways towards the stairs. He peered through a darkened sitting room, seeing nothing. Looking upward, he raised the gun with his eyes. He could see the balcony of the second story, which overlooked the bottom hall. Renly took careful steps onto the staircase, keeping his eyes ahead of himself. One slow footstep after another, he worked his way to the top of the steps until his boots touched the delicate threads of an expensive foreign rug. The way was clear on both sides. Renly took the right. Outside of the window, it would have been the left side of the house. The side he had seen the shadow through the window’s curtain.

 

He worked his way towards an open doorway near the end of the hall through which light poured out in a low golden beam. His footsteps became slower, but his heart seemed to pound louder inside of his chest. Somehow, though, Renly’s hands remained steady. Around the corner of the wooden doorframe, he peered into a lavish room embellished with bookcases on every wall. There was a desk at the far end of the room near the windows with a glass enameled lamp sitting on the corner, its shade painted with prancing yellow lions on a red background. In the center of the room, he spotted a circle of elaborate wooden chairs with red velvet cushions. In one of the chairs sat his target, puffing on a pipe as he held a newspaper in one of his hands.

 

Renly stepped into the room with a calmness that belied the turbulent nature of his thoughts. The man sitting in the chair had good eyes, though. He must have noticed Renly out of the corner of his vision. He looked up immediately, spotting Renly standing there with a gun in his hands, and moved quickly in order to get up from the chair and no doubt ring some kind of alarm system that he had set up for his home in case of intruders.

 

Renly fired off one shot from the gun, lodging a bullet in the man’s leg.

 

The silencer on the tip of the gun shrouded most of the noise. No one outside of the house would hear anything, and there was no one left alive inside of it but the two of them and Renly’s own people.

 

Tywin fell back into his chair, gritting his teeth. The newspaper had fallen from his hands as well as the pipe, the pipe clattering to the floor while the newspaper fell with only the sound of lightly crinkling paper. Tywin reached out to grip his leg, staring down at it for a moment before he raised his eyes to Renly.

 

Renly had stepped closer in that period of time, the gun still drawn on Tywin.

 

“You come into my _house_ ,” Tywin said in a low threatening voice, his light green eyes smoldering with flecks of golden fire, “dressed up like some common brigand—”

 

“Let’s not make this about me,” Renly said, pausing a few feet away from Tywin.

 

“Oh, but it is about you,” Tywin shot back. “You and your dead lover—”

 

Renly fired off another round into Tywin’s arm. Tywin barely cried out, grasping his wounded arm with the hand from his uninjured side.

 

“I’ve got thirteen more,” Renly said calmly, never taking the gun off of Tywin, “and I can decorate your whole body with twelve more before I put the last one into your skull. Choose your words carefully, Lannister.”

 

Tywin raised his eyes to Renly again. “If you wanted to kill me, you would have done it already,” Tywin said in a tight voice, “so why are you here, Renly? You think as soon as you walk out of here that I won’t report you for breaking and entering as well as aggravated assault with a deadly weapon upon an unarmed man? You think I won’t rain hellfire down upon you and your whole bloody family? You’re a bigger fool than either of your brothers, and you prance around this city like dainty little fairy—”

 

Renly lowered the gun from Tywin’s chest to his other leg, firing a third round into Tywin’s kneecap. The older man howled aloud this time, his face scrunched up in pain as he leaned forward and half slipped out of the chair. Tywin grasped his leg right above his wounded knee, but he wouldn’t have any more hands for another bullet wound if Renly shot him again.

 

Another figure stepped slowly into the room behind Renly, a gun in hand. Renly heard the footsteps, his eyes turning slightly to the side with his head.

 

The figure walked around in a circle until she stood beside Renly, and she raised her gun on Tywin, too.

 

“Are we going to kill him?” Sarella asked in a low voice.

 

Renly didn’t answer her question. He stared at Tywin as the older man was bent over himself, grimacing in agony, and thought of dragging out his misery.

 

“He expected me to run to the Mountain as soon as I got the call,” Renly told her, tilting his head to the side as he stared down at Tywin. “He expected me to think in my grief that I could kill someone like Gregor Clegane without being crushed like a bug—or to at least not care if I was.” Renly took one more step forward. “What he didn’t expect,” he continued in nearly a whisper, “was for me to come right to the source and snuff it out like a dying candle.”

 

“You won’t get away with thi—”

 

Renly hit Tywin across the face with the gun, metal cracking against bone, and then he aimed the end of the barrel back on the older man’s head. “Take out your wallet,” Renly ordered Tywin.

 

Tywin gritted his teeth. “I’m not wearing my wallet—”

 

“Sarella,” Renly said tightly, ignoring Tywin’s claim, “check his pockets and get his wallet. He’s always wearing his wallet somewhere on his person.”

 

Sarella came around to the side of the chair and bent over the armrest, reaching out with her free hand to rifle through Tywin’s pockets. She found his wallet in his right pants pocket, pulling it out and handing it over to Renly. Renly took it from her hands and stepped away from Tywin. He wasn’t going to inspect it right next to the man while he was holding a gun. He flipped open the wallet, finding some bills in it. He pocketed the money, pulled out the cards, and then he threw them onto the floor haphazardly, scattering them across the carpet.

 

Sarella stared down at the cards, her eyes alight with confusion. “What was that for?” she asked slowly, lifting her gaze to Renly.

 

Renly threw the empty wallet at Tywin’s chest. It bounced off of him, landing on the floor instead of into his lap.

 

“Check the room for valuables,” Renly ordered her. “We’re taking them.”

 

Sarella’s eyes darkened. “Why?” she asked.

 

“Just do it,” Renly said slowly, looking up at her.

 

Sarella drew her cheeks inward, pursing her lips, but she turned away from him and began to rummage around the room, looking for valuables. She opened the desk and rifled through it. She had to break open one of the drawers, which was locked, and caused Tywin to jump as he looked over at her. Renly kept his eyes on Tywin, never removing the gun from him.

 

“Don’t you dare—” Tywin began, but Sarella lifted a handful of jewelry from the locked drawer of his desk, necklaces and bracelets, rings and earrings. Her eyes were wide with shock, impressed with what she had found hidden in his things.

 

“These are beautiful,” she said, looking between the jewelry and Renly.

 

“Pocket them,” Renly told her.

 

“Those were my _wife’s_ —” Tywin hissed out.

 

“Pity,” Renly said. “Now, they’re mine.”

 

Tywin turned his burning eyes onto Renly, his face clouded with hate and rage. “You mean to _rob_ me—”

 

“I mean to make this look like a robbery,” Renly said casually, waving his gun, “before I kill you.”

 

“You call this justice?” Tywin called out, mocking him, but before the older man could say anything else in protest, Renly cut him off.

 

“Justice?” Renly threw back, and then he made a face as if he was thinking about it. Renly shook his head, though, as he falsely came to the conclusion that he didn’t need time to think on before making up his mind. “No, not justice,” he said. “I’m tired of justice. Revenge is sweeter.”

 

Raising his gun to level it with Tywin’s forehead, Renly pulled the trigger. Tywin flew back into the chair at the impact, his head falling to the side as his body fell limp. Renly immediately aimed the barrel of his gun in various areas near the chair, firing off a few rounds before lifting the gun to the wall and firing the rest of the bullets into the wall in a scattered, messy pattern. When he was done, he dropped the empty gun to the floor. It fell with a dull thud against the carpet. There were no fingerprints on it, and the serial number was filed off. He wasn’t bringing it with him and getting caught with a murder weapon. _Let the police have it_ , Renly thought. They would find no evidence on the pistol, and there would be no way to track it.

 

When Renly glanced over at Sarella, she was staring at him with a single raised eyebrow. “What was that for?” she asked him, walking out from behind the desk to rejoin his side.

 

“Had to make it look messy,” Renly responded, looking back down at Tywin’s dead body. “We don’t need to give them a reason to look into something more than a crime done for the money.”

 

“Well,” Sarella said, “let’s get out of here.”

 

Sarella made for the doorway to leave the room, but Renly stood there, staring at Tywin’s dead body for a moment longer than was necessary. He didn’t feel any better, having killed Tywin, but it was over now. There was no more war to fight with the Lannisters with the head of the family taken care of for good. Jaime was nothing more than a disgraced officer anymore, and Cersei was a pretender who could never hope to hold what her father had held for decades. She had the guts, but she didn’t have the wits.

 

Renly tried to tell himself that this was all that mattered to him, defeating Tywin Lannister for good, but it wasn’t all that mattered and it would never be all that mattered to him. Loras was gone forever, and killing Tywin would never bring him back. Renly was still shrouded in the darkness that came with the loss of the only thing that mattered in his life. He glanced around the room covered in a soft glow, and he wondered why the darkness hadn’t abated and why the weight on his heart hadn’t lifted. If anything, it felt heavier in the silence of the study. The light wouldn’t come back to him, and Loras wouldn’t come back to him.

 

He was all alone now, and nothing in the world was going to change that. Not all of the dead bodies at his feet was going to change that, and more death wouldn’t change that. Oberyn would kill Gregor along with the rest of his daughters, but Renly wouldn’t find it in him to celebrate their victory in a bottle of champagne. He would spend the night at his club because if he went home, he would find it empty and lacking. Renly couldn’t drive to the scene of the crime because no one had called him to inform him of what had happened yet, and he couldn’t explain how he knew about it when no one had called him to tell him. He wasn’t about to let one slip cost him everything, even in his grief.

 

Suddenly, he drew in a deep, shaky breath, realizing there were tears in his eyes. Renly raised one of his gloved hands to his face, running the scratchy black fabric over his face in a circle. When he dropped it, he glanced over at the desk. Slowly, his feet took him over in that direction. The longer he lingered here needlessly, the more imminently he put himself into danger, but for the moment, he couldn’t care as much as he wanted to care about his own safety anymore.

 

Renly walked right up to Tywin’s desk, admiring the glass enameled shade and its pattern of lions. He stared at it until a sudden urge overcame him to swipe his arm across the desk, knocking various items off of it, including the lamp, in a fit of rage. Glass smashed against the floor, scattering across the red carpet in a pile of glittering bits.

 

He wasn’t anymore satisfied with the further destruction he had caused, but he finally walked away from the desk and made his way towards the study’s exit. Along the way, Renly passed by a black candelabra sitting on top of a bookshelf that was only waist-high. It held three burning candles. The flames flickered back and forth, catching his eyes and making him pause.

 

Reaching out with his hand, Renly pitched the wicks with two of his fingers and snuffed out their flames one by one until they were all dead and smoking little trails of wisps into the air above them. He stared at the thin wisps of smoke and sighed, turning away from them and walking out of the room at last.

 

In an attempt to leave swiftly after lingering, Renly hurried with quickened steps through the house down the staircase and out into the lower hallway. The house seemed dimmer than it had before as a newfound sense of darkness hung over his head, making him feel more like a shadow than the sun. Warm air passed over his face as he walked towards the front door, and briefly, he closed his eyes.

 

 _When the sun has set_ , Renly recalled Loras’s voice saying to him once, jokingly, _no candle can replace it_.

 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he could still picture Loras’s smile as he had said it. As Renly reached out for the door handle, he twisted it and pulled it open, passing through the threshold and stepping out into the cold. Renly opened his eyes again, but Loras’s smile was gone, and so was Loras.

 

At the end of the walkway, Sarella sat in the vehicle he had left by the curb.

 

Renly blinked once and then twice against the bitter reality of it, steeled himself against the dull sting, and hurried down the steps into the yard and towards the car. The air was cool against his cheeks, but the hood draped over his head from his jacket kept him warm enough until he reached the vehicle. He hopped into the driver seat. Sarella had already started the car with the keys he had left in it.

 

The only sound to fill the night was the crunch of tires against the asphalt as they pulled away from the house. As they drove off, another car pulled out of park to follow in their wake, carrying the rest of Renly’s entourage with it.

 

When both vehicles had driven away, the street was shrouded in a peaceful silence once more.

 

 


	98. I Am Your Unlikely Hero

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** A very special thanks to both Littlefeather and Aurelia-mix for helping me work past my writer’s block I had encountered on this story. Also, a very special thank you to everyone who sent me words of encouragement and kind messages over these past two weeks.
> 
> This will be the last update before Christmas, so Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! <3

_* * *_

 

Jaime was curled up awkwardly in the hospital chair, sitting sideways in it with his arms folded and bunched against his chest as his legs dangled over the edge of the armrest. His chin pressed downward into his collarbone, his head tipping forward even more as he dozed off again. He would have a crick in his neck by the time he woke up, napping at this twisted angle in the chair. For now, though, he didn’t feel it. His eyes were closed, his mind half-asleep. In the background noise of the hospital room, he could just barely hear the low hum of a laugh track echo from the television after one of the characters in the sitcom had told a joke.

 

The morning sun rose slowly outside of the window, filling the room with a soft blue light edged in frost. The room remained dark with its heavy curtains pulled shut, but the light came in all the same from the corners and the edges, peering in as if with curiosity and the smallest measure of brightened hope. With the light dawning on them, there all of a sudden came a chill into the room as well, and it passed down Jaime’s neck and into his spine, sending a tingle into his nerves as he shivered awake. He briefly opened his eyes, gazing blearily at the scene before him.

 

The hospital bed with its raised rails on the sides came into focus. Jaime saw the set of beeping blue and black machines first, the colors of the lights drawing his attention to them. Its various colors of green, yellow, red, and orange flashed in and out on little buttons of light that monitored her stats. He stared at them for a while, slowly blinking away the sleep still present in his eyes. Jaime had been up almost all night with scattered naps that did him little good. Turning his head, he looked past the machines to the fluid IV bags hanging on the opposite side of the bed on a metal pole. Two intravenous lines ran down from the bags, connecting to her arm.

 

Amidst the set of beeping machines, which told of her heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen level and more, and the fluid IVs, a young lady lay on the hospital bed in the center of them.

 

Sansa breathed in and out with slow, steady breaths. Those breaths were barely visible beneath the neatly folded bed sheets that had been pulled up to her chest. Her arms were resting right on top of the white sheets and the beige blanket, her palms laid down against the bed. She had not stirred since she had been brought here. Either she was peacefully asleep or in a coma, though Jaime had thought he heard one of the doctors say that she wasn’t in a coma because there had been no irreversible bodily, head, or brain damage inflicted upon her.

 

 _She would wake up_ , they had said.

 

Her parents had come in the middle of the night, Catelyn in tears and Ned in a cold rage until he saw his daughter hooked up to the hospital machines and the IV bags. Her body was just lying there as if she was asleep. Ned had knelt beside her bed onto the cold, hard floor one knee at a time, and then he had taken one of Sansa’s hands into his own hands, clutching it tightly within his grasp. There had been silence at first, stretching on for an indeterminable amount of time, before Ned had begun to sob silently beside his daughter’s bed as if she were already dead. Though the man didn’t make much noise as he cried, Jaime had seen Ned’s shoulders and back as they quaked with each one.

 

Catelyn had gently rubbed her husband’s back, holding her head high through her own tears. It seemed, in the end, Catelyn was made of sterner stuff than her husband. After Ned had calmed down and his sobs subsided, they commiserated quietly before noticing Jaime in the corner of the room. His presence had taken them by surprise, but they realized almost immediately how and why he would be allowed in the room.

 

Ned had come to Jaime first, extending his hand towards him.

 

Jaime had looked down at it before raising his eyes to Ned’s face. Slowly, he had clasped the other man’s hand in acceptance, only to be drawn into a sudden and an unexpected hug. It had been a quick grasp and release, lasting no more than a few seconds, but when Ned pulled away, Jaime was left with a mystified feeling clouding up his head. Ned had spoken no words, but he had nodded his head at Jaime. Jaime had nodded his back in a sign of mutual understanding, though he had still been perplexed. Ned had stepped back from him, and Catelyn came to Jaime next. She had wrapped her arms around him in a gentler embrace, giving him a quiet _thank you_ near his ear.

 

It was more than that to him, though. It was more than just saving her.

 

Sansa was innocent, and he was born to protect and serve. This was his purpose in life. Even without his badge, his life still had meaning. Jaime hadn’t done it for himself, and he hadn’t done it for the glory or the recognition. He had done it for an innocent girl, resting on the bed a few feet away from him. Jaime might have died, running in headfirst like that, but he had taken the risk because protecting Sansa with Brienne was worth it. Some people might have called him crazy, and Jaime might have chosen to be a police officer for all of the wrong reasons, but he had found his calling in it, and no one or nothing could ever take that away from him.

 

Through his bleary haze, he gazed forward at the nothingness before his eyes as they adjusted to the room. Even after Jaime had tried convincing Ned and Cat to go get some breakfast, they had refused it on all accounts, wanting to be there for Sansa whenever she woke up at last, but he had promised to stay with her until they returned to her side. It had taken some more convincing, but Ned and Cat had eventually relented to his request when he settled himself in the chair and looked up at them, claiming he would be right there when they got back.

 

He hadn’t been lying. Jaime stared with a squint at the glare of light that glinted off of the floor tiles. It was a sharp, oblique ray that fell past the air conditioning unit in the wall. The light shifted and seemed to grow as if reaching out for them. He blinked at it, catching movement out of the corner of his eye. Jaime turned his head and looked towards the bed. Sansa was stirring, twisting bed sheets slightly as she moved hands, wrists, knees, and toes.

 

Jaime scrambled out of the chair, grasping the armrests as he pushed himself out of it. The chair scooted roughly against the tiles, screeching, and he almost lost his balance. Jaime halted all of a sudden to stop himself from falling, blinking his eyes wider, hands gripping the chair tight, before he felt like his equilibrium was back. He righted himself more slowly this time, leaving the chair and hurrying to her bedside. The bedrail had been lowered on this side, and he took a seat beside her on the mattress, reaching out for Sansa’s hand to grasp it carefully between both of his. He didn’t want to hurt her, and he didn’t know how much pain she would be in when she woke up. They had her loaded with medication, though. Jaime wondered if she would even feel his hands.

 

Sansa squeezed her eyes tighter shut without opening them first, and she twisted her head side to side as if shaking in a fevered dream. Jaime glanced down at her hand, stroking his thumbs over her skin in a comforting gesture. Sansa calmed down considerably, and as if like a newborn opening her eyes to the first light of her life, her eyelids fluttered open until her blue eyes were focused on Jaime’s face of all things. He felt her hand clutch his tighter, gripping fast, as a spark of light went off behind her eyes. Jaime couldn’t tell if it was fear or relief or both of them at once, but Sansa rose quickly from the bed—much quicker than what he expected of her in her condition—and threw her arms around his neck until she was clutching onto him hopelessly, hands slipping in his hair, one falling to his back as she gasped—no, sobbed—and her nails dug deep into his shirt between his shoulder blades.

 

Jaime felt uncomfortable, his back stiffening in her embrace, but at the same time, she was a scared young woman who had just woken up from a nightmare with no recollection of how she got to safety, and she needed some kind of comfort. He couldn’t deny her that. Awkwardly, he raised his hand to pat her back, and Sansa only clutched him tighter. Any tighter, though, and she would cut off his air supply. Jaime bore it and put both of his arms around Sansa to hug her back in full.

 

It had the desired effect. Her grip began to loosen, her arms slackening around his shoulders. Eventually, it was just a hug instead of a death grip, but she didn’t let go of him. Sansa didn’t want to let go of him. Her voice, small and broken, spoke close to his ear.

 

“Sandor . . . ” she began, trailing off.

 

It took Jaime a moment to realize she was asking him a question, not just saying a name. Disentangling himself from Sansa’s embrace, Jaime pulled back from her to look her in the eyes. He held the sides of her arms in his hands, searching her gaze for an answer even as he asked his own question.

 

“What do you remember, Sansa?”

 

Her eyes, sullen, became confused as she stared back at him. Sansa’s gaze flitted back and forth, probing his face, before she looked down at her lap. Her mouth parted slightly, though she didn’t immediately speak, and Jaime took notice of the healed cut on her split lip. Surrounding it was a blossoming bruise, red and purple, but small.

 

“He . . . he was _cutting_ me,” Sansa told him, her voice sharp but her body steady beneath his grip. She did not raise her eyes to his. “He . . . he cut off my skin. He cut my legs, my thighs, my arms . . . ” Her voice grew smaller, quieter. “He said he wanted me to bleed out before anyone got to me . . . ” As if remembering her wounds, she looked down at herself and held out her hands. Trembling, Sansa put them down in her lap, reaching up to touch the inner curve of her left elbow to a bandage there. “I . . . I don’t feel it.”

 

“They stitched you up,” Jaime said. “They have you on strong pain meds, too.”

 

Carefully, Sansa reached up to touch her forehead. “I feel dizzy,” she admitted.

 

“You moved too fast,” Jaime told her. “You’ll feel better if you lie back down.” He gave her a sympathetic look. “Trust me.”

 

Sansa moved to lie back down on her own, resting back against the pillow again. Jaime hadn’t wanted to push her down to the bed, not even with a gentle nudge on her shoulder. He didn’t know how far things had gone at the warehouse, and he was worried of frightening her. Sansa looked ill, and she closed her eyes. She swallowed, her throat bobbing with the motion.

 

“Do you remember anything else?” Jaime asked, his voice having fallen quieter, too. “Anything at all?”

 

Sansa reopened her eyes, but her head was turned to the side on the pillow. She blinked, and it seemed as though there was a deadened quality to them. “No,” she said, and then she shook her head slowly. “I don’t remember anything else. I passed out, I think.”

 

Jaime reached out for her hand again, resting his on top of hers. “That’s okay,” he told her. He patted her hand, albeit awkwardly again. “It’s all right. You don’t have to remember everything.”

 

He was trying to be comforting, but he had no idea how to do it.

 

“Is something wrong with me?” Sansa asked him, still staring off to the side.

 

“No,” Jaime said hastily. “Why would you say that? There is nothing wrong with you.”

 

“I don’t mean . . . ” Sansa sighed, closing her eyes. “Did something happen to me I don’t remember?”

 

 _Oh_ , Jaime thought. _That_.

 

He felt his jaw tighten. “No,” Jaime told her, but his voice cracked somewhat. He cleared his throat. “No, nothing else.”

 

Jaime wasn’t going to say the doctors had performed a rape kit on her just to be safe, and the results for it wouldn’t come back for another week or two, anyway. It might even take up to three. He had remembered standing out of sight as they discussed it nearby, though. _We’ve collected some DNA evidence_ , they had said, _and we’ve found traces of semen and saliva on her_. _There is also some vaginal tearing as well as signs of forceful entry_.

 

Until the lab results came back on the semen and saliva, Jaime didn’t want to say anything. He wasn’t supposed to be privy to that information as it was, and the hospital might restrict his visiting access if they found out he had been listening in on things. Most of all, though, he didn’t want to give Sansa a reason to panic. If something happened and she didn’t remember it, then it was better this way. If something had happened to her, then it was better if she never knew at all.

 

But his thoughts were getting ahead of him, and there was no knowing this soon what had happened before he had gotten to the warehouse.

 

Sansa’s hand twisted beneath his, her fingers curling around his hand.

 

Jaime glanced up from their hands to look at her face. Sansa was looking back at him now, but she was calmer than she had been a moment ago. Even with her pale skin and bloodshot eyes and bruises, she was strong. She did not smile, but she didn’t have to. Jaime knew there was an iron will beneath her surface, and Sansa would be just fine when all was said and done. The corner of his mouth curled upward slightly with the barest hint of a smile. Though she didn’t return it, it seemed as if her eyes brightened in response.

 

“You parents are here,” Jaime said. “As well as your brothers and your sister.”

 

Sansa’s eyes clouded over at his words. “Where are they?” she asked.

 

“Asleep in the waiting room,” he told her. “Well, your parents went to go eat. I told them I’d wait here until they got back.”

 

There was a question on Sansa’s face, and she didn’t wait to ask it. “Will you get Arya for me?”

 

Jaime stared back at her. He was quiet for a moment. “I told your parents—”

 

“Please,” Sansa said, cutting him off. “I want to see my sister.”

 

There was a genuine plea in Sansa’s eyes, and Jaime couldn’t refuse it. He sighed, feeling outwitted by a young girl and her too large eyes looking at him like a lost baby wolf looking for her pack. He took one of his hands away from hers and ran it through his hair, scratching his scalp near the back. His head itched, but he had not had a shower in over twenty-four hours and he was due for one.

 

“All right,” Jaime agreed, “I’ll go get your sister.” He raised his finger upward. “But if your parents come back and chew me out for leaving, it’s your responsibility to tell them why I left.”

 

“Okay,” Sansa said quickly, squeezing his hand.

 

Jaime let go of her hand, patting it one last time. “I’ll send her up,” he said, and he pushed himself up from the edge of the bed. He crossed the room, and when he made it to the door, he turned around and placed his hand against the frame as he looked back at Sansa. She appeared to be just fine aside from the bruises on her skin and her haggard looks, and Jaime watched her across the distance as she inspected her hand with an IV running into it.

 

Turning his head away from the scene, he walked out of the room.

 

The hallways seemed both bright and dim as he walked them, and at times Jaime found himself shielding his eyes, though not long after he had to drop his hand to see. When he made it to the waiting room, the scene awaiting him involved all of the Stark kids sprawled over each other in a cluster of bunched chairs. Theon lay out across three of the chairs with his head in Robb’s lap. Robb and Jon were both sitting upright, Robb’s head tipped back against the chair, his neck exposed. Jon’s head rested on Robb’s shoulder as he leaned into him. Rickon was lying on top of Theon, and on the left of Jon was Arya, halfway in Jon’s lap and hugging him in her sleep.

 

Bran lied on the carpeted floor at Robb and Jon’s feet with a jacket draped over his shoulders while a cushion taken from the loveseat rested beneath his head as a pillow.

 

Jaime stared at the sight, thinking he had never seen such a display of family in his entire life.

 

It shouldn’t have, but it left a bitter taste in the back of his mouth.

 

Pushing it from his mind, Jaime approached the only girl in the group with quiet footsteps. He didn’t want to wake the boys and start a scene, so he crouched onto one knee to be at eye level with Arya when she woke up. Reaching out with his hand, Jaime tapped her shoulder with a single finger. Arya didn’t even stir. Very slowly, she opened her eyes. She blinked at him until her vision came into focus, but she didn’t untangle herself from Jon. There was just the smallest moment of silence between them as Jaime and Arya stared at each other, and it seemed as if the rest of the room was frozen in time. Finally, she spoke to him.

 

“Is she awake?” Arya asked, keeping her voice low.

 

It was as if she was reading Jaime’s thoughts through his eyes.

 

Slowly, Jaime nodded his head.

 

Arya looked away from him long enough to disentangle herself from Jon’s arms and remove herself from Jon’s lap without waking her older brother. Jon shifted his head against Robb’s shoulder, but otherwise he remained asleep. Jaime stood up again as Arya slid off of the chair and onto her feet soundlessly with a natural grace that said she had done this maneuver a thousand times before. When Arya righted herself and straightened out her clothes, she looked up at Jaime. He was much taller than her. She was still a short thing for her age. Sixteen and counting, but she looked a lot younger.

 

“She wants to talk to you,” Jaime told her, but before he could say another word, Arya took off in a mad dash right past him and flew out of the waiting room exit without another word spoken.

 

Jaime blinked at the nothingness before him where Arya had been only a second ago, turning his head to glance at the door as it slowly crept to a shut on its own. He hadn’t expected her to take off like that, but now that she was gone, he didn’t have a reason to stay here in the waiting room with the rest of the Stark brood. Jaime turned away from them and left, entering the washed out hallway beyond the waiting room into another flood of fluorescent lights that were sometimes too bright and sometimes too dim.

 

There was someone else in here that he wanted to see.

 

He walked the hallways and boarded an elevator to another floor. He had to get to the surgery wing of the hospital to the recovery room facilities. Sansa had not needed any type of surgery, so she was located in the intensive care unit due to sustained bodily trauma. The colors of the hospital washed out to white as Jaime neared the surgery wing. He knew the way to the recovery room without having to ask for directions. Jaime had been in it earlier. Shortly after Ned and Cat had arrived at the hospital, he had left them alone with Sansa and made a trip there.

 

With Sansa awake and in good hands as her family surrounded her, she didn’t need him anymore.

 

Jaime stood before the doorway with his hand against the frame, gazing into the room. A small smile crooked itself on his lips as he watched the person in the bed struggle with opening a small carton of orange juice, which was on a four-legged food tray made to sit upon the bed over a body, with only one hand available for use. The other arm was bound in a sling, rendering its hand useless.

 

The carton busted at the top, squirting orange juice into the air.

 

“ _Shit_ —”

 

Jaime had to cover his mouth to stop, but he snorted through his hand.

 

There was silence in the room.

 

“Oh, you think this is funny?”

 

Jaime bit his lips together, smiling brightly, as he strolled into the room. “I think it’s hilarious,” he offered.

 

Brienne glared at him, pointing the finger from her good hand at him. “When we get home, I’ll tie your shoelaces together, so when you put your shoes on in the morning, you trip and fall flat on your face.”

 

“You won’t be awake to see it,” Jaime shot back, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

 

“I’ll record it,” Brienne said, still glaring.

 

Jaime’s face softened. “Sansa’s awake,” he told her.

 

Brienne’s glare was gone with a blink, replaced with a blossoming look of shock. “How is she?” she asked immediately, leaning forward on the bed and bumping into her food tray, rattling the bowls and silverware. “How is she feeling? How is she doing? Does she remember anything?”

 

Jaime tilted his head, giving Brienne a look. “One question at a time,” he teased, but Brienne furrowed her brow angrily at him. She wasn’t having any of Jaime’s teasing today, so he cleared his throat and decided it was best to stay away from it for now. “She’s doing just fine,” Jaime revealed. “She doesn’t feel any pain, but they have her on a lot of meds. I’m surprised she didn’t stay out for longer with what they’ve got running through her drip. If it weren’t for the pain medications, she would have woken up a long time ago.”

 

“She deserved some rest after what she’s been through,” Brienne said, her voice unsteady. She wasn’t looking at him. Brienne was staring at something ahead of herself. Jaime turned his head to look at it, but there was nothing in front of her except for a wall across the room. “What does she remember?”

 

Jaime glanced back at Brienne. “She doesn’t remember much. He was cutting on her . . . stripping off her skin, hoping to make her bleed to death. She passed out, and that’s all she remembers.”

 

Brienne cut her eyes to Jaime. Her eyes had darkened. They were impossible to read. “The rape kit,” Brienne pushed. “Did they find anything?”

 

Jaime stared at her at first, wordless. After they had gotten to the hospital, he had chosen to stay with Brienne, not with Sansa. They had told him nothing as they rushed Brienne past the swinging double doors. They hadn’t revealed how bad it had been or whether or not she would survive. They had only told him to wait and stay here. Jaime had paced in panic outside of the surgery room for Brienne. She had sustained a bullet wound to the chest and needed surgery immediately. Meanwhile, Sansa had been courted off to the intensive care unit for her trauma-related injuries as they called her parents to inform them of her arrival. Jaime had given them the information to contact Ned and Cat, but he couldn’t stay with Sansa when Brienne was going into emergency surgery.

 

When the door had opened and the surgeon came out to speak to him, he found out everything was all right and that Brienne would be just fine. Nothing vital in her chest had been struck by the bullet, but her left arm would be useless until she fully recovered from the damage done to her muscles. With this news, Jaime was able to rest easy. The surgeon had said it would be some time before Brienne would wake from anesthesia, so he had gone to check on Sansa until her parents arrived at the hospital. It was then when Jaime heard of them wanting to conduct a rape kit due to the lacerations on her inner thighs. When Ned and Cat showed up, Jaime had left to go back to Brienne.

 

Brienne had been awake when he came back to her. Jaime had told her about the rape kit, and Brienne had insisted that she was fine and that she wanted Jaime to stay with Sansa instead of with her. Jaime had returned to Sansa’s room at behest of Brienne to watch over the girl, to comfort her parents, and to make sure Sansa was all right whenever she woke up. Brienne had said she would have done it herself, but they wouldn’t let her leave recovery, so Jaime did it for Brienne. He went back to Sansa’s room, talked Ned and Cat into getting breakfast, and stood watch over Sansa. As Jaime had wandered the area just outside of Sansa’s room to work off the cramps in his legs, he had overhead the results of the rape kit.

 

He hadn’t mentioned it to Ned or Cat yet. They were under enough stress as it was with Sansa’s condition and the events that had brought their daughter here, but Brienne wanted to know about what they had found on Sansa. Jaime wasn’t even sure if he wanted to tell her.

 

Eventually, though, he caved in.

 

“They found semen, saliva, and signs of tearing,” Jaime said, feeling it difficult to say. He was talking about Sansa’s body. The thought made him uncomfortable. “They’ve sent the samples to the lab for testing.”

 

Halfway through him speaking, Brienne had sharply turned away from him. Her jaw was set tight in a firm face, and he glanced down at her hand resting on top of the food tray—her fist squeezed tight, knuckles turning white. Jaime had seen the darkened look in Brienne’s eyes, a look that did not come upon her face very often. It was nearly impossible to make Brienne enraged, but when a woman was hurt in such a way, nothing flared her anger more.

 

Jaime reached out and placed his hand over hers, a slow and gentle motion so as to not startle her. He folded his fingers over Brienne’s hand.

 

“You can’t kill him,” Jaime said below his breath. “He’s already dead.”

 

“I can cut his head off of his body—”

 

“I don’t think that would accomplish much,” Jaime told her, a soft note of teasing to his voice. He felt Brienne’s fist clench harder beneath his hand before her grip loosened.

 

“It’s not fair,” Brienne said. “Not her.” She shook her head, lips tight. “Not her.”

 

“No, it’s not,” Jaime agreed quietly, “but maybe we should wait for the results, don’t you think?” He paused. “Before we jump to conclusions?”

 

It was strange, him being the support instead of the one supported. Brienne had always been the rock, and now the tables were turned and Jaime was wading in unfamiliar territory. He had always been the cocky asshole, showing little to no concern for those around him until she came along into his life. Brienne had put Jaime in his place, but she had also made him realize that someone could see him for who he was and not just for his father’s name.

 

Jaime wasn’t good at this. He couldn’t pretend that he knew what he was doing. He had no idea. The expression on Brienne’s face had failed to soften at his suggestion. If anything, it had grown harder.

 

“What would the results change?” she asked.

 

Jaime was struck silent. He didn’t know how to answer that. He thought maybe he would close his eyes and open them again, finding himself at home in his bed with all of this just a bad dream. If he could rewind the months, he would take it all back.

 

None of this would go away, though. None of this would be just a bad dream.

 

“I don’t know,” Jaime said at last. “I can’t say.”

 

Suddenly, the rigid stance of Brienne’s shoulders seemed to fall, and she drew in a deep breath. When he looked at her face, Jaime saw her façade fall away into a look of turmoil as she gazed upward at the ceiling and tried to suppress the urge to cry. He knew she had gone there to help save Sansa, and now Brienne felt like she had failed. Even though Sansa was alive and well, Brienne felt as if she had let the girl down in the worst way possible by not arriving sooner.

 

Jaime knew Brienne’s propensity for guilt and self-blame, so he drew her into a careful embrace with one arm around her back and held her close to him. He was conscious of how he held her because he didn’t want to hurt Brienne’s wounded arm that was bound up in the sling. There was no shaking, no signs of sobbing, and no sounds of crying from her either. Brienne was silent, and she curled her one good arm around Jaime as well to hold him back. They sat there together in the hush of the room for some time, no sound accompanying them but the steady hum of the AC unit underneath the window.

 

When Brienne pulled away from him, she leaned against the pillow behind her back. The head of the bed had been raised upward, propping her up. She closed her eyes, giving herself a moment to breathe slowly, before opening them again. Jaime stared at her, wondering what was coming next.

 

“Can I have some time alone?” Brienne asked without looking at him.

 

Jaime sat immobile for a moment because of her request. When he accepted it, he rose from the bed. Jaime glanced over at Brienne, but she still wasn’t looking at him. Turning away from her at last, he walked towards the door to leave her by herself. If she needed some time alone, then he would grant it. Jaime understood why she needed it. He wasn’t going to question it.

 

As he journeyed down another fluorescent lit hallway, Jaime felt like he was in a daze. His short nap in Sansa’s room hadn’t been enough to sustain him. He took a moment to stop and lean against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut. It stopped his head from spinning, but the world still appeared like a blur before his eyes. Jaime pushed himself from the wall and stumbled down the hallway, pointing at the signs for the room numbers and reading them out loud as he passed them by. When he reached one in particular that he remembered from earlier, Jaime found the door closed.

 

He twisted the handle, and it opened easily. The door gave way with a _click_ , and Jaime pulled it outward to make room for stepping inside.

 

The interior of the room was dim and dark. The curtains were pulled shut, but a lamp sitting on an end table beside the bed gave off a warm orange glow beneath its shade. The television was on, providing another source of light, but the sound had been turned off.

 

The person in the bed was bound in much the same way as Sansa. There was an IV drip on the right side of the bed closest to Jaime, and on the left side there was another machine to read and monitor vital signs. Some of the lights were steady while others blinked on and off, and he heard little beeping sounds accompany several of the vital stats.

 

Jaime walked right up to the side of the bed, sitting down in a chair beside it.

 

The occupant of the room heard the chair squeak as Jaime sat down in it. Slowly, his head turned towards Jaime, eyes opening blearily. There wasn’t one of those oxygen masks obstructing his face, even though in Jaime’s opinion it looked like he needed it.

 

“Lannister,” Sandor managed to say, his voice scratchy and faint.

 

Jaime tilted his head to the side. “Clegane,” he offered back.

 

“You almost killed me,” Sandor told him, but it didn’t sound like an accusation. It was more of a statement of the fact. It was true. Jaime had pulled a gun on him, and he had also threatened to shoot.

 

“You were lucky,” Jaime said, the corner of his mouth twitching upward into the smallest of smiles, “when Gregor showed up behind you, I had a much better target to shoot at.”

 

Sandor turned his head away from Jaime, letting out a weak exhalation from his lungs. Jaime thought it would have sounded like a snort if Sandor had been in a better condition than this. There was a strange forked bandage on Sandor’s nose. It looked like it meant to help with realignment, but Jaime wasn’t sure. His nose looked broken.

 

Sandor was quiet.

 

“I didn’t shoot you, did I?” Jaime asked him, hoping to break the uncomfortable silence.

 

From the moment he had gotten a good view of the hulking, stumbling figure of Gregor Clegane in the snowy shadows behind Sandor’s back, Jaime had known who was responsible for this and who wasn’t. Jaime had fired off one round at Gregor, but either the bullet only grazed the bigger man or had no affect on him. Gregor raised a pole, swinging it before Jaime could get another clean shot at him without hitting Sandor, and struck down Sandor with it. Jaime had fired ten to twelve shots into Gregor Clegane’s body until the monstrously-sized man halted his advance and fell at once to the ground, toppling like collapsing building into the snow.

 

Jaime had sworn the ground shook at his fall, but he couldn’t tell if his mind had imagined it or if it had been real.

 

“You almost did,” Sandor repeated, looking up at the ceiling.

 

“You’re going to hold that against me?” Jaime asked him.

 

“How much have you been holding against me?”

 

Silence descended on them again, and Jaime looked away from him. Sandor had a point. Jaime had been holding a lot against him, and he was only now realizing how wrong he had been all along. It was a reluctant sort of realization, too, and it didn’t sit well with Jaime, but he owed Sandor this—whether he liked it or not.

 

“We never liked each other,” Jaime said with an idle voice, staring off at the wall. It was strange making conversation like this with Sandor. He never expected he would ever see the day. “We were on opposing sides of the fence, you and me. I was for the law, and you were against it.”

 

“You were a dirty copper,” Sandor replied flatly. “There was no fence.”

 

Those words stung, and they stung hard.

 

Jaime raised his chin, feeling his jaw tighten. Sandor was right, though. That was the rub. Jaime refused to look at him again, but he doubted Sandor was looking at him either. The air was fraught with tension, and Jaime wasn’t sure what else to say. He struggled to find the words. They couldn’t have this barrier between them, though. They couldn’t keep doing this for eternity until one of them finally died and broke the cycle.

 

“I deserve that,” Jaime answered at last.

 

“You deserve a lot more than just that,” Sandor told him, sounding tired.

 

“Fair enough,” Jaime agreed.

 

Jaime made no move to get up and leave, and Sandor said nothing else. When he looked over at Sandor, the man had closed his eyes again. Sandor was breathing steadily, his chest rising and falling with each motion, but he wasn’t wasting his energy on arguing with Jaime. He chose to rest instead.

 

Looking at Sandor resting made Jaime realize how tired he was himself, and he felt his eyes drifting to a close. This chair was larger and much more comfortable than the other chairs he had encountered in Sansa and Brienne’s rooms. Slipping down into the seat, Jaime let his eyes shut all the way. He felt his neck tipping his head backwards, and before he knew it, sleep had defeated him and a peaceful blackness descended over his mind.

 

Some hours later perhaps, though Jaime wasn’t sure how much time had passed, he heard a squeak that awoke him. His eyelids fluttered open, and he realized a blanket had been draped over him a small pillow had been placed between the chair and the left side of his head. He had drifted towards it in his sleep, halfway resting against it. Jaime blinked his eyes open and looked around the room. He had doubted Sandor had given him the blanket or even had the energy to get out of the bed.

 

When Jaime spotted Sansa on the other side of the bed opposite of Sandor, he sat up straighter to get a better look. She was still in her hospital gown, but she had wheeled the IV into the room with her. Sansa was on top of the blanket, bare legs exposed to the chilly air, her arm thrown over Sandor’s middle as she curled up to him on the bed. Sandor was fast asleep, lying on his back, seemingly unaware of her presence. She had laid her head on Sandor’s shoulder, though. Her auburn hair was strewn everywhere around them, looking brighter than normal against the whiteness of the sheets and their hospital gowns.

 

Jaime glanced down at his blanket. It must have been given to him by Sansa. As slowly as possible, he pushed himself up from the chair without making a noise. He had to stretch to get rid of the ache in his muscles, and he rolled his neck back to eliminate the crick in it from sleeping awkwardly in yet another chair. When he was finished with stretching, he walked around the edge of the bed with quiet footsteps to Sansa’s side. Jaime draped the blanket over her form, making sure it covered her toes, even if she was wearing socks. The girl didn’t need to freeze to death because she couldn’t crawl under Sandor’s blanket without waking him.

 

Once, this might have made him angry. Jaime recalled the outrage he had felt, a burning white hot fury against the sweet and innocent Sansa having anything to do with the likes of Sandor Clegane. However, Jaime realized there were people who felt the same way about Brienne having anything to do with the likes of him after he had shamed the department. Daily, Brienne dealt with backlash from the department in particular due to her continued relationship with Jaime in the time after he had been stripped of his badge and removed from the force. There were not many people who understood their relationship or supported it, and none of them seemed to understand that Jaime wasn’t a bad person simply because of the mistakes he had made in his past.

 

It wasn’t very different from them, Jaime realized, looking down at Sandor and Sansa as they slept on unaware of his gaze.

 

Feeling awkward of lingering and looking, Jaime turned away from the bed and headed towards the exit. He needed to find a bed to sleep in for a few hours. He was tired of falling asleep in these hospital chairs. He made a mental note to go to Brienne’s room and to steal one of the empty beds off to the left. Her room had contained two other beds, both currently unoccupied as of his last visit to it.

 

When he reached the doorway, Jaime glanced back one more time with his hand on the doorframe. He wanted nothing but the best for Sansa. Maybe they weren’t flesh and blood relatives, but Jaime had been close to her family. He thought of her as family, too. To have those bonds cut by his past transgressions had hurt, but maybe it could now be repaired.

 

If Sansa could see the good in him, then Jaime thought he could see the good in Sandor. It might take time for him to accept it, but Jaime knew he could at least try for her sake.

 

Jaime turned away from the sight of them curled up on the bed together, and he made sure to close the door quietly behind himself. It shut with _click_ , and Jaime stepped away from Sandor’s room. He walked the halls until he found Brienne’s room again, but when he arrived, he found the other two beds beyond hers were occupied with other people. Brienne was fast asleep in hers, turned over onto her side. There was some space behind her on the bed, so Jaime made the most of it.

 

Soundlessly, he crawled into the bed behind Brienne, putting his arm around her waist and resting his face against the back of her bare neck. It was a snug fit, and Jaime had to cling to Brienne, but there was room for both of them at this angle.

 

Closing his eyes, Jaime fell back asleep easily beside her.

 

 


	99. Afraid of a Light in the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** At the end of this chapter, I’ve included a list of songs so far whose lyrics inspired the chapter names, covering Chapter 83 through Chapter 100.

_* * *_

 

While the air in the room was freezing, Sansa kept warm with a pile of blankets that Arya, Robb, and Jon had retrieved for her. Theon and Robb had taken Bran and Rickon back home to rest days ago, and the hospital had signed a release for Arya on her second day, but she had refused to go home and had instead stayed with Sansa. Arya had suffered a concussion from the wreck, but there wasn’t any serious damage aside from a bump on her head. She also had various bruises, a large one in particular on the elbow of her left arm, but nothing was broken. She had told Sansa that Mum and Dad had ordered her to go back to her hospital bed at once when they discovered she had left her room during that first night. Arya, being Arya, had refused in a huff and declared she didn’t need anymore doctor supervision and that she was just fine. The news had reached them about Arya before it had reached them about Sansa, and their parents had arrived with Bran and Rickon before anyone else in the family reached the hospital. While Ned was driving, Catelyn had called all the older boys. They came later in the night. After their brothers had visited Arya, Arya snuck out to join them in the waiting room for Sansa when she heard from Jon they had found her.

 

Gendry, on the other hand, was still confined to a hospital bed. His injuries from the wreck were worse than Arya’s, and he had cracked multiple ribs. Arya took breaks from Sansa’s room to go and visit Gendry throughout each day, and their parents took alternating days at the hospital with Sansa and Arya. Catelyn tried harder than Ned to talk Arya into coming home, even if it was to just shower and eat before coming back, but Arya refused and stayed at the hospital. She slept in Sansa’s bed at night with her sister, and she washed at the sink in the bathroom. Catelyn brought Arya a fresh change of clothes each day that she came by, taking the dirty ones home with her to wash them. Ned and Catelyn both brought them home-cooked meals, too, though Sansa still also received food from the hospital. They both picked at it, but it wasn’t very good.

 

There was nothing seriously wrong with Sansa aside from the risk of infection on her leg where the skin had been flayed in two spots. They had given her a shot to reduce the chances of an infection, and they were giving her antibiotics for it, too. Some of the cuts on her body were also deep, though others were shallow. While none of them had cut an artery, they were monitoring her dressings and keeping her cleaned each day to make sure the wounds healed properly. They told Sansa if she went home and didn’t properly take care of them while they first began to heal, a serious infection could still take root. Sansa had chosen to the stay instead of checking herself out and going home. She didn’t want to take the risk, but she also knew that Sandor was still in the hospital as well.

 

Sansa snuck out from time to time to visit his room at night, but they had caught her once and the looks the nurses had given her was enough to make her stay in her own room these last two days. Nothing had happened, but Sansa sleeping in Sandor’s bed beside him was enough to rile up the staff. Her sister hadn’t even noticed that Sansa had disappeared during the night. Arya had slept like a log in Sansa’s absence, but when Sansa was escorted back to her room, she found Arya had taken up the majority of the bed and finding a comfortable spot had been a nearly impossible feat. Luckily, she had managed it without waking up her little sister from her slumber.

 

Currently, Sansa was sitting upright on the bed, sharing the blankets in a huddle with Arya beside her. Jon was sitting on the foot of the bed, one leg dangling off the side and the other bunched on the bed with him, as he dealt out cards from a deck in his hands for each of them. Playing cards was a fun way to pass the time in the hospital, and Jon had been coming by each day to play with them. Rickon and Bran hadn’t been back to the hospital to visit, but Robb and Theon had both come by together twice since that first night when Arya and Sansa were admitted to the hospital. Of course, they were their usual boisterous selves in an attempt to take Sansa and Arya’s mind off of things. Even though Sansa and Arya appeared fine on the outside, things were not okay on the inside. They were pretending to be, though, for their family’s sake and somewhat also for themselves.

 

Sansa thought if she could convince herself that she was all right, then she could also convince everyone else, too. She had survived, and so she chose to look at things from a different perspective. She had been terrified, and she had been in so much pain, but she had lived and Gregor had been the one to die, not her. She could push Gregor from her mind, but there was one thing she could not push—the image of Loras looking up at Gregor, his mouth twitching into a scowl as he glared at the man in a last act of defiance, and the _boom_ of Gregor’s gun followed by a bright flash before Sansa’s eyes as the bullet went straight into Loras’s head and ended his life.

 

She still thought she had imagined the flash of light. Sansa wasn’t sure about gun physics. The close proximity of the barrel to her sight could have created such an image, but she wasn’t sure if it had been real or a figment of her imagination. She thought sometimes that it might have even been Loras’s soul leaving his body as the bullet entered his brain, but such a thought always broke her down into tears that she couldn’t explain to her sister, no matter how many times Arya asked her what was wrong.

 

The burden of Loras’s death, so brutal and unexpected, was the one thing heavy on Sansa’s mind. It was the only thing she couldn’t fight.

 

“Sansa?” echoed a voice nearby, coming to her as if out of a haze.

 

Sansa suddenly focused into reality, realizing she was staring at the downturned cards in front of her on the bedspread. She glanced up to see Jon staring at her from across the bed, his forehead knitted together in a sign of worry and his dark eyes full of concern.

 

Quickly, she looked down at her cards and scooped them up into her hands. Her siblings remained silent. When Sansa glanced up again, she found Jon and Arya both staring at her. Sansa looked between the two of them, reading the looks on their faces easily.

 

“I’m fine,” Sansa said immediately.

 

Arya blinked, giving Sansa her best _are you kidding me_ stare. Jon, however, had a more sympathetic expression on his face.

 

“Really,” Sansa insisted, staring down at the hand of cards she had been dealt. “I am fine. Arya, you’ve been through the worst of it. I was kidnapped for a night. You were kidnapped for a week. I don’t think anyone should be looking at me like I need some kind of special treatment.”

 

“I didn’t say that,” Jon told her from across the bed. “I haven’t said anything.”

 

“I might’ve been kidnapped for a _week_ ,” Arya drawled out, “but I wasn’t carved up like a prized bird for Christmas dinner.”

 

For the first time since Gregor had held the cold knife to her skin, Sansa felt her chin tremble at the memory of what he had done to her. She stared pointedly at her cards, refusing to meet Arya or Jon’s gaze. Her eyes felt damp, and her vision blurred in front of her until she could no longer read the letters and numbers on the cards.

 

“Oh, Sansa, I was only—” Sansa felt Arya’s hand on her arm, and she didn’t try to shrug it off. She did, however, shake her head.

 

“No, you’re right,” Sansa said, cutting her off, “but still—”

 

“I’m doing fine,” Arya told her. “You’re the one who needs support.”

 

“Quit lying,” Sansa whispered without looking at Arya. “You’re not okay.”

 

Arya’s hand seemed to stiffen as it laid there on Sansa’s arm, but she didn’t pull it away. Jon noticed the moment of tension, and he cleared his throat to interrupt the silence. “I think,” he began slowly, “instead of comparing that we should just all be there for each other. There’s no reason why we can’t do that, is there? You have both been through a lot. I’m worried about the both of you, not just one.”

 

Sansa felt the stiffness in her shoulders leave, and she felt Arya’s hand loosen up on her arm. Arya took her hand away, returning it to her hand of cards.

 

“Can we just play a game of cards?” Arya asked them, and there was a tone of annoyance in her voice. It wasn’t towards either one of them, Sansa realized, but it was because Arya didn’t want to talk about what had happened with Ramsay, which was just fine because Sansa didn’t want to talk about what had happened with Gregor.

 

“Yes,” Sansa said, “let’s play a game of cards.”

 

“All right,” Jon agreed, and he reminded them both of the rules before they went ahead with the game. Arya was an easy learner when it came to card games, but Sansa had trouble with remembering all of the rules. Sansa always did that with these types of games, so when a knock came at the door, Sansa welcomed it with open arms by looking up immediately. Catelyn stepped through the doorway, a large bag in hand, and Sansa dropped her cards in a heap in front of herself as a smile bloomed across her face.

 

“Mum!” she called out, and Arya and Jon both looked, too.

 

Catelyn smiled at all of them. “I’ve brought dinner,” she said, crossing the room to stand in front of the chair by the bedside. Catelyn opened her bag, removing a plastic container stuffed with food, and handed the first one to Sansa because she was closer to her. Sansa passed it to Arya, and Catelyn pulled out a second one of the same thing to give to Sansa. A few more containers followed for sides and deserts until Sansa and Arya both had three each, and then Catelyn gave them a sealed mug each, which were hot to the touch, and some silverware to eat with.

 

When everything was handed out and Sansa and Arya had spread across the bed and created sufficient space for eating, Catelyn took a seat in the chair with a sigh and let her empty bag fall to the floor beside her. “How are you feeling, girls?” she asked them, sounding exhausted.

 

As Sansa brought her fork to her mouth and took her first bite, she gazed at their mother’s face and noticed the tiredness was evident on her skin as well. Catelyn had dark circles under her eyes, and the lines on her face were more pronounced. Their mother wasn’t wearing any makeup today, and her hair was up in a simple ponytail at the back. Suddenly, the food didn’t taste so good, even though it did. Sansa felt guilty for her mother looking like this. It was her fault Catelyn couldn’t sleep properly, stood up late, and slaved extra hours in the day to make sure her and Arya both had good food in their bellies instead of hospital food. If it were not for everything that had happened, Catelyn would be resting at home instead of looking so exhausted and worn down to her last threads.

 

Talk erupted between Arya and Jon, chatterboxes together if there ever was such a thing. Catelyn mostly listened with a grin in her face, her dull eyes brightening up as she laughed at their jokes and antics. Sansa picked at her food with a fork, moving it around and only eating little nibbles here and there. She didn’t partake in the conversation, tuning most of it out, but nobody seemed to really notice, or if they did, they didn’t want to bother her again.

 

Their conversation was cut short with an abrupt knock on the open door. Sansa looked up to see the main doctor who had been overseeing her since her arrival in the doorway with a clipboard in hand. The doctor was a nice woman in her forties with mid-length black hair and tanned skin, and she had a kind but stern face. Sansa had yet to see the woman smile, but the doctor had been nothing but warm and accommodating towards Sansa from the moment Sansa had woken up in the hospital from her injuries.

 

“Miss Stark,” the doctor said, “do you have a moment to speak in private?”

 

Sansa furrowed her brow in confusion at such a question, and then she shook her head. She couldn’t think of anything that would warrant a private conversation with her doctor. Her parents, brothers, and her sister already knew of everything that had happened to her at the warehouse, so there was nothing new to discuss.

 

“No,” Sansa said, “that’s fine. They can stay. It’s nothing I won’t tell them later.”

 

Her doctor looked skeptical, though. “Are you sure, Miss Stark? This is private information for you—”

 

“I’ve told you,” Sansa repeated, looking at her doctor in the eyes from across the room, “I’ll tell them later. They have my permission to stay in the room.”

 

Her doctor drew a noticeable breath inward, looking between Catelyn, Arya, and Jon. Finally, she rested her eyes on Sansa. Turning around to close the door, the woman crossed over to the bed, still holding her clipboard to her chest. Pulling it away, her eyes roved over the paperwork on top for a moment before they met with Sansa’s again.

 

“Due to the nature of the incisions that were performed on your inner thighs and the damage to your undergarments, Miss Stark,” her doctor began slowly, “we performed several DNA swabs as well as an examination to rule out or confirm a possible sexual assault upon your person.”

 

Sansa felt her throat suddenly dry up and a heavy weight sink into her stomach. She swallowed, and it hurt. “What do you mean?” Sansa asked, finding her voice wavering. “I don’t remember—I mean, there was nothing—”

 

“We felt it was best, especially due to your loss of consciousness,” her doctor told her. “There might have been something that happened to you that you couldn’t or wouldn’t remember when you woke up.”

 

“What were the results?” Catelyn asked from her chair. Sansa glanced over at her mother. Catelyn’s face had paled at the news, her knuckles matching the drained color of her face as her hands gripped onto the armrests too tightly.

 

Sansa looked back to her doctor, and the woman was looking straight at her.

 

“Are you sure, Miss Stark?” the lady asked one more time.

 

Sansa’s heart fluttered faintly within her chest, and she could feel it. “What were the results?” she asked in a soft voice, repeating the words of her mother.

 

Her doctor was silent at first, staring across the distance into Sansa’s eyes with a pointed gaze. The silence was brief but heavy on Sansa, though, and it crushed her chest with weight. She thought very soon she would feel like she couldn’t breathe at all, but she wasn’t shaking. Her body was deadly still, unable to move. Sansa felt frozen like a statue in time and space.

 

“We found traces of semen and saliva,” the woman said, her voice sounding like a faraway echo in Sansa’s ears as she delivered the information, “and there was also some tearing of the tissue on the inner walls. Your body sustained multiple bruises, but there is no way to be clear on how you obtained those. We received the lab results on the DNA we had collected earlier this morning, and it matched an offender in the system.”

 

Sansa was shaking her head at the news. “No,” she said. “No, it can’t be possible. It can’t—he didn’t—he’s dead—”

 

“No, Miss Stark,” the doctor continued, causing Sansa’s chin to lift up as shock dawned in her eyes, “he is not dead. He is in the recovery wing of the hospital. The DNA matches Sandor Clegane. We can call the police up here if you want to press charges—”

 

“What?” Catelyn demanded, rising from her chair. “What do you mean?”

 

“I _knew_ it!” Arya shouted from beside Sansa on the bed. Her chipper tone ruined the thick tension in the air. “I just _knew_ it!” Arya cried out, pointing her finger at Sansa as she grinned with a mischievous gleam in her eyes. “Gendry called it! You had sex with Sandor that night! Didn’t you, Sansa? _Didn’t_ you!”

 

The weight was still there in her stomach, but Sansa felt a sudden rush of heat to her cheeks as she whirled on her sister. “Shut _up_!” she hollered, wanting to shove her sister, but she had to suppress the urge. Arya was in a car wreck not even a few days ago, and Sansa had no business shoving her, even if the urge to do so was strong.

 

“Um, what is going on?” Jon nervously asked from the foot of the bed. His voice was on edge as if he had expected to hear different news than this, and he didn’t know what to make of Arya’s claim.

 

“Sansa had sex with _Sandor_!” Arya announced in a sing-song voice, still grinning at Sansa.

 

“Shut _up_!” Sansa yelled yet again at Arya, her face blossoming into a red blotch as mortification swarmed over her. This was not happening to her. This was _not_ happening. First, the possibility of something much worse had lingered in the air, something terrifying and unbelievable, a possibility Sansa was not willing to accept. This, however, was just downright embarrassing and awkward. Sansa couldn’t make Arya stop revealing her secrets except for hollering at her, and _that_ alone simply wasn’t going to work.

 

“Wait,” Catelyn announced firmly, holding up her hand as she interrupted Sansa and Arya’s bickering. Sansa fell silent, glancing over at her mother, and Arya had fallen silent beside her as well. “Am I hearing this right?” Catelyn addressed towards the doctor, raising her eyebrows in question. “Did _any_ of the DNA that you found on my daughter come from Gregor Clegane?”

 

The doctor shook her head. “No, none of it was a match for Gregor Clegane,” she answered.

 

A deep sigh escaped Catelyn’s lungs in a measure of relief, and her calmness was palpable. “Well, then, in that case . . . ” Catelyn was silent, staring at the empty space of air before her, until her eyes suddenly widened in shock. She whipped her head towards Sansa, glaring at her daughter. “Did you _even_ use a condom?” she demanded.

 

Horror washed over Sansa, and she dropped her face into her hands. She felt her skin burn hotter than before. “This is not happening,” Sansa said with a muffled voice through her palms. “This is not happening . . . ”

 

“I’m . . . going to go wait outside,” Jon said abruptly, hopping off the foot of the bed and onto his feet. He headed towards the door to leave, which was pointless. Jon was trying to give Sansa some privacy for her own sake, but it was too late. He had already heard everything, anyway.

 

“Arya, leave,” Catelyn commanded, and Arya obeyed their mother immediately. She slid off the bed, landed on her feet, and hurried towards the door to get out before Catelyn could change her mind and ask her to stay. The doctor excused herself from the room as well to give Sansa and Catelyn some time alone. Sansa, on the other hand, wanted to curl under the blankets and never come out again.

 

When the door closed behind them, it left Catelyn alone in the room with Sansa.

 

Sansa didn’t look up, but she heard her mother take a seat in the chair once more. It squeaked under the added weight, and Sansa was afraid for the silence to end. She knew her mother meant well, but now was not the time for what Sansa knew was coming next.

 

“Please, Mother,” she said quietly into her hands, and Sansa never called Catelyn that unless it was dire. “I can’t handle a lecture right now. I just can’t.”

 

She heard a weary sigh escape her mother’s lungs, and the sound made Sansa’s shoulders draw tight with tension. “No,” Catelyn agreed, “I am not in the mood to give a lecture either, Sansa. We’ll talk about it later when you’re better. Please, eat some more. You’ve barely touched your food.”

 

Sansa slowly lifted her face from her hands. She gazed down at her food, which had been pushed and prodded but hardly eaten, and picked up her fork as well as one of the bowls again. Sansa slowly ate some more of what her mother had brought for her. It tasted better this time, but it was not due to the cooking. Her frame of mind was still piecing itself together from the initial shock of the news and how it had sounded so different from the reality of the situation.

 

For all of one minute in the space of her life, Sansa had feared for the worst—for something that she had never expected to ever happen to her, but then again, she supposed all girls thought that. The very possibility of such a thing had shaken her to the core, even if it had been something that might have happened to her while she was unconscious that she wouldn’t have remembered. The idea was a horrifying one, and her nerves were still shot from it. Her posture was straight, a delicate silence hanging on the air about her, but inside of her, it was a storm. It poured torrent after torrent of cold rain on her, lashing at her skin like whips.

 

The results of the lab test and the examination had only been the aftermath of her and Sandor’s first time together, but Sansa had never considered how wrong it could all sound under the right circumstances. How it had been presented to her was everything, and what her doctor had spoken of had not sounded like what she and Sandor had experienced together that night. In all fairness the staff did not know the specifics of the case, nor did they know about Sansa’s relationship with Sandor, so it had been an easy mistake for them to make. As she pondered over her thoughts and attempted to calm her nerves, Sansa brought the fork to her mouth and ate another small bite after another as her mother sat in the chair across from her, saying nothing.

 

Eventually, Catelyn pushed herself up from her seat. Sansa paused long enough from eating to look up as her mother approached the bed. Catelyn stooped over Sansa to wrap her arms around her daughter’s shoulders in a gentle hug. “Eat your food,” Catelyn told Sansa close to her ear, “and get some rest.” She pulled back to place a kiss on Sansa’s head before letting go of her.

 

Sansa gazed on in silence as Catelyn pulled away from her and turned around to retrieve her bag from the floor. Her eyes followed her mother’s path towards the door, and even though Catelyn didn’t speak another word out loud, there was an obvious unspoken understanding between them. Catelyn knew that Sansa was under enough pressure as it was with what had happened to her, and she knew that Sansa didn’t need any more of it right now from her.

 

Catelyn opened the door, but she looked back at Sansa before she left. She gave her daughter one last smile, though it seemed faded and stretched too thin. Sansa returned the smile with a warmer one of her own to make up for the tiredness in her mother’s expression, and she watched while Catelyn disappeared beyond the door. It shut quietly behind her, leaving Sansa in an empty silence all by herself.

 

Exhausted and desirous for sleep to clear her mind, Sansa removed everything from the bed and placed it on the small end table in stacks before she slid under the covers and laid her head against the pillow. She closed her eyes, thinking of nothing to make sure she did not dream—but even that would not ensure a nap without the company of her innermost thoughts. Still, she thought it might help, and so she made sure to think of nothing as she drifted off into a nap.

 

Sansa slipped into a dream world, familiar and yet unfamiliar to her. She felt the cold against her skin as sure as ice. Even though she was dressed in thick wool and simple furs, it did little to fight off the bite of the wind that blew in from the open windows. She stood in a large, empty room made of stone, and the hue of the blocks was a soft blue bordering grey. The room was as wide and as tall as a cathedral, but it was cold and empty. Stone and rock made up the room, and it was filled with empty metal braziers that held no warm fires but dead coals and cooled ash.

 

“This is your home now,” a voice said to her, familiar and yet unfamiliar. Sansa frowned at it, not knowing how it was familiar to her ears. It was a man’s voice, but it was no one that she knew, no one that she could name. She did not like his claim, though.

 

This did not feel like her home, and Sansa was sure she would not ever consider it as such.

 

“No,” she said to herself, low enough she was sure he would not hear it, “this is not my home.”

 

“What was that, my dear?” echoed the voice across the room, and Sansa looked up. She searched for the face to go with the voice, but she saw no face, only the blurred outline of a man who was short in height with close-cropped hair and a long, flowing robe that reached to his feet. She could not see his features, though, no matter how strongly she squinted to look. He was like a figure stepping out of a blotchy painting as he drew near, all washed out colors and blurred edges and no defined appearance—an abstract man with no name.

 

“Yes, this is my home now, Father,” she said as if she had recited the words time and time again for this particular moment. However, Sansa’s heart spiked with discomfort at the title that had slipped out past her lips for him. He was not her father, this man, and she knew that. This was not Eddard Stark, so why had she called him her father?

 

The colors darkened, descending into pure cold, and Sansa shot upright, fearful heart pounding madly inside of her chest. It was dark outside of her window, so it was nighttime now. Her nap had lasted much longer than she had expected it to last. The room was colder as well, and her skin was freezing. Her teeth began to chatter in her mouth, and she folded her arms over her chest, rubbing them with her hands as if it might help warm up her skin quickly. Sansa knew she had a frightful dream of some sort, but she could not remember what the dream was about or who had appeared in it. Everything was lost to her the moment she had woken up, except for the strange feeling of terror upon waking and the distinct feeling of being lost without anyone to help her escape.

 

Sansa slipped out of bed and landed with her feet on the freezing tiles below. She wore socks on her feet at least, so it was not as bad as it could have been, but she would have to do something about her gown. Sansa grasped a blanket from her bed and wrapped it around her shoulders, drawing it tightly to her, and padded her way over to the door. She was no longer hooked up to an IV drip, so Sansa didn’t have to drag one of those metal poles along with her this time. She could just sneak out of her room as she was, hoping nobody saw her slinking down the hallways and recognized her. Sansa didn’t want to go back to her bed tonight all alone, and that was what she would have to do if they caught her sneaking out again.

 

She peeked around the corner of her door, looking both ways, but the hallway was empty and the way was clear. Sansa slipped out of her room and closed the door behind herself. She made her way through the hospital quietly, taking the stairs instead of the elevator to avoid the possibility of being seen, and padded down the hall of the recovery wing until she found Sandor’s room number. She opened the door and slipped inside, and then she closed the door to make sure no one walked by to close it themselves, checking on Sandor before they did and saw her in his room.

 

When the door was shut, Sansa turned around and faced the inside of the room. It was cold in here, too, but not as cold as her room. The television was on in the background, humming low and barely audible. She made her way quietly to the opposite side of his bed, the side closer to the windows, still holding her blanket tight around her body. She had to let go with one hand to pull back the covers on Sandor’s bed, and Sansa crawled beneath them, stuck in a small space at the edge of the bed without much wiggle room and pressed too hard against his side to be comfortable. She remained wrapped in her blanket, though it hung over the edge somewhat, and pulled his covers over herself as well. It was hot underneath all of the blankets, and Sandor in particular was very warm as well. Heat emanated off of his body, softening the bite of cold she had felt against her skin.

 

Sandor shifted in the small bed, slowly waking up from the disturbance of her arrival. He realized there was another person in the bed beside him, turned his head, and blinked his eyes open twice at her. There was sleepiness to the motion, and it made Sansa smile softly up at him. Wordlessly, Sandor moved over to the side to give her more space in the bed, and Sansa graciously made the most of it, though she stayed snuggled close to his side. It was quiet between them for some time, and Sansa felt her eyes drifting to a close as her mind grew heavy, but then Sandor spoke and broke the silence, and her eyes flew open again.

 

“What are you doing in here?” Sandor asked her, his voice low and raspy. Sansa bit down on her bottom lip. It reminded her of his voice in her strange dreams.

 

“I had a bad dream,” she whispered. “I couldn’t sleep.”

 

Slowly, his arm moved until it encompassed her in a hug, his hand grasping her arm to hold it with a gentle grip. “You’re going to get into trouble again,” Sandor murmured, “coming in here like this.”

 

“It’s not like we’re doing anything,” Sansa said quietly. “We’re just lying here.”

 

“You tell them that.”

 

“I will,” Sansa said in an almost testy manner. “You can barely move, and I’ve got stitches on my thighs, so it’s not like—” Her words cut short, though, unable to finish her sentence, though knowing how it was meant to end.

 

Sandor’s grip tightened on her arm. They hadn’t had a chance to talk about what had happened at the warehouse yet. The handful of times that Sansa had visited his room these past few days, bordering on a week, Sandor had been in and out of it with his medications. They were keeping him longer this time, not only for the injuries he had sustained that night, but because the wound of his chest from the knife Arya had stabbed him with had not had time to fully heal—and after what he had been up to since his release, they had refused to let him go so easily this time.

 

“Sansa,” he rasped, his voice scratchy, his tone pained. It caused Sansa to lift her head from his arm to look at his face in the low light. She was careful to avoid his shoulder and his chest as places to rest her head, and even her arm was draped over Sandor’s waist instead of his chest. The tone of his voice had frightened her, though, because she was not sure what had brought it on.

 

“Is something wrong?” she blurted out before he could say anything else, and his expression tightened, his eyes seeming to darken, but Sansa was not entirely sure if that was her imagination or just the light.

 

“Did . . . did my brother . . . did he . . . ”

 

Sansa realized with a sudden widening of her eyes what he was trying to ask her but could not bring himself to say out loud, and she quickly shook her head.

 

“No,” she said hurriedly, “no, he didn’t.”

 

Sandor drew in a sharp breath at her answer. His lips tightened as well, and his eyes seemed to shift in the dark light back and forth as if searching her face for any possible lie to spare him. His grip on her arm grew firm before relaxing once more, and he nodded his head in acceptance of her response. Sansa wondered if he had feared the worst, but her answer had calmed him. His neck slackened as he turned his head until the back of it rested against the pillow, and Sandor shut his eyes again, but his hand did not leave her arm.

 

“I’m going to be here for a while,” he said in a low voice, his face upturned to the ceiling.

 

Sansa rested her head against his upper arm near the crook between his arm and his shoulder, but she kept her eyes open and on him. “That’s okay,” she said. “I can stay, too.”

 

“You have school to get back to,” he murmured. “You can’t miss the rest of your last year.”

 

Sansa felt a smile curve the corner of her mouth. “I won’t be here that long,” she whispered. “I doubt it will take months before I leave, but I don’t want to leave too soon. I’m not ready to go back, not yet. Too much has happened, and I want some time alone before I go back and deal with all of the people.”

 

“Why are you with me, then?” Sandor asked, and she noticed how his eyebrows lifted without him looking at her. It amused her, but she kept it to herself.

 

“I feel safe around you,” Sansa answered him, her fingers curling into her palm atop his waist.

 

“I’m bedridden,” Sandor said flatly. “We’re in a hospital.”

 

Sansa’s cheeks reddened with heat. “You know what I mean,” she whispered.

 

Sandor sighed low. “I know,” he said at last.

 

Sansa flattened her hand against his stomach. She wondered if he could even feel it, or if he was just that numb with all of the pain medication. “I like being here with you, even if you are bedridden.”

 

“Stay then,” Sandor told her, and he sounded tired again. Sansa wondered how much longer he could stay awake before he slipped unconscious again. Sandor had been sleeping more than he had been awake, but Sansa supposed that was a good thing. Doctors always said rest allowed the body to heal quicker, whether it was from injuries or infections or illness.

 

“I will,” Sansa murmured, closing her eyes and flexing her fingers beneath the covers. She was comfortably warm from head to toe now, curled up beneath a pile of blankets with Sandor at her side. The television was a distant hum in the background, filling her eardrums as darkness crept back into the corners of her mind.

 

Sansa wondered when she would wake up next—and what day it would be when she did.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 83\. Be Careful Making Wishes in the Dark – “My Songs Know What You Did In the Dark (Light ‘Em Up)” by Fall Out Boy  
> 84\. The Odds Gonna Stack Up – “Lost in the Echo” by Linkin Park  
> 85\. In My Face is Flashing Signs – “Counting Stars” by OneRepublic  
> 86\. Seek It Out and Ye Shall Find – “Counting Stars” by OneRepublic  
> 87\. A Long Blinding End – “Roads Untraveled” by Linkin Park  
> 88\. This Ship Will Carry Us – “Little Talks” by Of Monsters and Men  
> 89\. When the World Ends – “When the World Ends (Oakenfeld Remix)” by Dave Matthews Band  
> 90\. Feet Don’t Fail Me Now – “Born to Die” by Lana Del Rey  
> 91\. And You Say, Stay – “Stay” by Lisa Loeb  
> 92\. Birds of Prey Circling Overhead – “Falling Out of Love” by Mary Gauthier  
> 93\. You Can’t Choose What Stays and What Fades Away – “No Light, No Light” by Florence + the Machine  
> 94\. With a Thousand Lies and a Good Disguise – “You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid” by The Offspring  
> 95\. I’m Flesh and Blood, and My Body Hurts – “Falling Out of Love” by Mary Gauthier  
> 96\. Seven Devils All Around Me – “Seven Devils” by Florence + the Machine  
> 97\. The Sun Sets Fast These Days – “Van Nuys” by Sixx Am  
> 98\. I Am Your Unlikely Hero – “No Curtain Call” by Maroon 5  
> 99\. Afraid of a Light in the Dark – “Spark” by Tori Amos  
> 


	100. Your Eyes, Black Like an Animal

_* * *_

 

Brienne looked up at their house as she stepped out of the vehicle, smiling at the familiar sight of its sun-kissed faded orange paint on the concrete walls and the little white window troughs. In the dead of winter, the window troughs were all empty, but during the spring and summer months, they sprouted vibrant flowers to decorate their home. Brienne could live without the flowers for now. It was the sight of the house that warmed her. She was tired of hospital walls and hospital food, and she was glad to be rid of them.

 

However, returning home was not everything she hoped it would be. Jaime had been silent on the whole drive home as he sat behind the driver’s wheel. While Brienne had still been in the hospital, Jaime had received the news of his father’s murder in his estate house a day after the incident in the warehouse. They had been told it was a robbery. Tywin had been shot multiple times before a bullet was fired pointblank into his head. Jaime had been quiet as he received the news, but he had been quiet ever since. He had spoken very little, only when he needed to, and mostly only to Brienne.

 

She was worried about him, and she had every right to be. Tywin was a horrible man, but he had still been Jaime’s father and Jaime’s blood. Tywin’s death would not make him a better man, but it would also not erase the bond between father and son. Cersei had said she would take care of all of the funeral arrangements and costs, but it had bristled Brienne’s feathers to hear the voice of Jaime’s sister on the other end of the phone when Jaime took the call. He had walked out into the hallway at the hospital to speak to Cersei in hushed whispers, and Brienne had strained her ears to try and hear their conversation. She had, however, heard nothing. When Jaime had come back, she had asked if anything was wrong. He had said there was a small argument between him and Cersei, but he also said it had already been resolved over the phone. He had spoken to her no further on the matter. Brienne had not been willing to push it at the time, so she had to let it go.

 

Their conversation over the phone still itched at the back of her mind, even with the smile on her face at the sight of their home. Brienne walked briskly towards the front door to get out of the cold as quick as possible, but Jaime had the key in his hand, and she had to move out of the way to let him open the door. The wash of warm air from within was like heaven against her skin, and Brienne was glad when Jaime stepped back to let her into the house first.

 

It was dark, so Brienne used her good arm to feel against the wall for the light switch. The hall light by the door flicked on, flooding her eyes with light, as she heard the door shut with a deep resonating sound behind her. The sound awoke her from her temporary reverie, and Brienne stepped forward into their home. It felt different to her, but it took her only a moment to realize it was Jaime’s silence that was different, not the house. He walked past her and headed for the kitchen without so much as asking her how she was feeling or if she wanted anything. It wasn’t like him, Brienne thought with a frown creasing her face, and she trailed Jaime’s steps into the kitchen.

 

He was rummaging through a cabinet for the tea when she came in from the hall, and Brienne stood by the opening in the hallway to watch him as she leaned her side against the wall. Jaime managed to get a whole pot of tea started before he even turned around to look at her. He paused, staring at her, blinked, and turned away to head towards the opposite hallway across from Brienne. Their bedroom was that way.

 

“Jaime,” Brienne called out, hoping it would make him stop. She was lucky, too. Jaime halted halfway down the hallway, and his head was bowed as if his eyes were staring at the floor. It wasn’t like him at all. Jaime had always stood with his head held so high and proud, and now his shoulders were slouched and his chin was lowered, his head bowed forward. “Talk to me, please,” Brienne said. She didn’t want to beg, but she didn’t want him to cast her into this never-ending silence either.

 

When Jaime stood there without turning around to face her, lifting his head and looking forward as if staring off into nothingness, he still didn’t answer her. She pushed forward yet again, pulling herself off of the wall and stepping through the kitchen towards him. Brienne was unwilling to let this go so easily, and she wasn’t going to give up without a fight.

 

“Is it about your father?” she asked him, keeping her tone neutral and concerned. Despite her fear of it being about his sister, Brienne thought it best not to broach that subject with him just yet. Cersei was a sore spot for them, and though every ounce of Brienne understood that Cersei was his sister, his twin, and his family, she did not like the woman. She also did not like it when Jaime kept secrets from her about his sister either.

 

“What else would it be about?” Jaime finally said, and in his tone she heard the hurt. His shoulders were stiff beneath his jacket, but he still did not turn around to face her.

 

Brienne crossed the kitchen to the other side, her feet on the edge of the hallway.

 

“Talk to me,” she urged, and in her body language was all of the pleading that she could not muster up for her voice. Every taut muscle waited in anxiety for Jaime’s answer, so when he turned around and his green eyes burned with a dull rage, Brienne knew everything was about to change.

 

“He was murdered,” Jaime said, walking forward until he stood in front of her. “This was no robbery. It was murder.”

 

Usually, it was in Brienne’s nature to ask questions, but she wasn’t going to ask any questions. She knew the case against Tywin Lannister, and she knew Jaime’s father had not been clean. When she had heard the news, something felt wrong in the back of her mind. The whole night had felt wrong like a dance planned for a funeral. Though it had been a massacre, it was too neat, too clean.

 

She agreed with Jaime. It was no robbery.

 

“You know they will be looking into it,” Brienne told him, but Jaime’s expression changed quickly in response, an almost mocking half smile sliding across his face as he looked up at the ceiling.

 

“They’ll look into it,” he repeated, as if questioning her. Jaime lowered his face to hers again. “Nobody liked my father, Brienne. Let’s be real here. How far do you think they’ll look before they come up with some half-assed explanation for what happened, so they can sweep it all under the rug and move on?”

 

Brienne didn’t like hearing Jaime talk like this, but he had a point.

 

“It’s possible,” Brienne said calmly, “but I doubt it. Agent Dany was keen on her case. She is not going to like someone coming in and ruining it. I imagine she will get to the bottom of this or at least find someone else who will if it’s out of her jurisdiction.”

 

“She was investigating my father,” Jaime replied flatly.

 

“She hasn’t outright said it,” Brienne ventured, feeling a little hesitant, “but I get a strong feeling that her reasons for being here have something to do with your father, Jaime.”

 

Jaime let out a deep sigh, the tension loosening out of his shoulders. “My father had his hooks in a lot of people, in a lot of things, Brienne.”

 

“I know,” Brienne told him.

 

Jaime was silent for a moment as he stood there in the hallway. “There’s nothing I can do about it,” he said. “I know that.”

 

“Agent Dany will take care of it, Jaime,” she said, even though calling her Agent Dany was still strange for Brienne. “I know she will.”

 

Even if it was strange for Brienne to call Dany an agent, she couldn’t very well go back to calling her just Dany. Nothing had been explained to either one of them so far when it came to Dany’s odd circumstances for being here in Kingsland, but that only heightened Brienne’s curiosity further when it came to the issue of why Agent Dany had gone to the lengths of posing as Tyrion’s wife in the process of her investigation. Posing as his wife could have given her access to things that she might not have otherwise had access to, but then Brienne had to wonder how legal it would have been to obtain any information that way. Unless, of course, Tyrion was a part of it.

 

Obviously, that made things twenty times more complicated in Brienne’s head.

 

However, Agent Dany had remained tight-lipped around Brienne about it, and she definitely hadn’t taken the time to draw Jaime aside and explain anything to him. He wasn’t an officer anymore, so Brienne didn’t see that happening. Tyrion could shed some light on things, but Brienne wondered if he would even speak to her about it. She hadn’t tried to call him yet. What with everything going on from her being in the hospital to the announcement of Tywin’s sudden death, there hadn’t been a chance to try and contact Tyrion yet.

 

“We should talk to Tyrion,” Brienne finally said out loud, voicing her thoughts. She stepped closer to Jaime until they were only a foot apart.

 

“I’ve already tried calling him,” Jaime said, surprising Brienne. He hadn’t shared this with her yet. Jaime shook his head. “He isn’t answering his phone.”

 

Her eyes scanned Jaime’s face. “And when were you going to tell me this?”

 

Jaime looked at her, blinking. “As soon as it came up,” he said. “It’s not as if I’m trying to hide it from you. There’s a lot going on right now, Brienne.”

 

Brienne drew in a deep breath, nodding her head as she looked down. “I know,” she repeated.

 

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Jaime added without worry in his tone, “but I doubt he’s at liberty to discuss this with us either. I bet he’s ignoring my calls on purpose. He was probably in on the whole thing.”

 

Brienne’s brow furrowed at the suggestion. “You don’t think . . . ” she began, but she was afraid to finish that thought out loud.

 

Jaime caught her gaze, noticing the look in them. He read it clearly, and his eyes darkened. “No,” Jaime said, shaking his head quickly, “Tyrion wasn’t in on that. There’s no way. Dany is an agent. They were trying to go about things the legal way.” His look turned into a pained expression as he bit the insides of his cheeks. “Besides, Tywin was _his_ father, too.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Brienne told him, “I didn’t mean—”

 

“No, I know,” Jaime said in a quiet voice. His gaze drifted downwards, focusing on Brienne’s collarbone. “It’s all right.” He shook his head again, though it was more slowly this time. “Everything is so confusing.”

 

Brienne took one more step forward to close the space between them, wrapping her one good arm around Jaime’s shoulders to pull him into a hug, and he raised his arms to encircle Brienne with them, hugging her back. Jaime was careful to avoid her arm in the sling, putting one of his arms around Brienne’s neck and the other around her waist. They stood there like that in the hallway for some time in silence, wrapped in each other’s embrace with nothing more to say, but the quiet was welcome. After everything they had been through, they needed a moment of silence together that wasn’t weighed down with tension.

 

It was Brienne who finally pulled away, and she took Jaime firmly by the hand to lead him towards their bedroom. She let go of his hand once they were inside, and as she sat down on the bed, Jaime walked past her to the closet. He took off his jacket, opening the closet, and hung it up. Brienne watched as he kicked off his shoes as well, and then he turned around to walk towards the bed. Jaime fell onto it as if gravity had pulled him down face first onto the blankets, and the bed bounced beneath his weight.

 

Brienne looked over at him and reached out, patting Jaime’s back with her hand. “Are you tired?” she asked him lightly, knowing he would most likely say yes.

 

“Yes,” Jaime answered predictably, his voice muffled against the blankets.

 

Brienne ran her hand along his back, trailing her fingers slowly. “Are we going to the funeral?” she asked, meaning Loras’s funeral, not Tywin’s funeral. Brienne thought they ought to go to both of them, but she didn’t know if Jaime would be comfortable going to the one they would be holding for Loras. There would be a lot of people there who didn’t like Jaime, and the last place Jaime would want to make a scene would be at somebody’s funeral.

 

Jaime rolled over onto his back upon the bed, staring up at the ceiling with his arms spread outward. He was closer to Brienne now, but she had removed her hand at the shift in his position. Jaime blinked up at the ceiling, his face looking blank.

 

“I think we should,” he finally said. “They’ll be holding it soon, won’t they?” he then asked, his voice sounding devoid of any emotion.

 

“Yes,” Brienne answered him. “It’s before your father’s.”

 

Jaime looked contemplative, and then the look faded from his face as soon as it had come to it. He rolled his head towards her, gazing across the bed at Brienne. “I don’t think they would like me being there,” Jaime told her.

 

“Piss on them,” Brienne said. “You have every right to be there.”

 

Brienne wasn’t sure how Jaime felt about Loras at this juncture. They still didn’t know what had been going on with Renly and Loras either, but something fishy had been in play with them. Jaime hadn’t talked about Renly, though, so Brienne had to wonder if he had dropped his interest in the idea she had put forth when it came to Renly Baratheon. Renly was an enigma, but perhaps her idea had been a sudden flight of fantasy and nothing more. Renly might have been involved in some shady business activities with some bad people, but he hardly seemed the type to run an organized criminal business himself. The more Brienne thought about it, the more ridiculous the idea became in her head.

 

Besides, Loras was dead, and he had died suddenly and unexpectedly, murdered on the street by Gregor Clegane. Loras had been Renly’s longtime partner, lover, and boyfriend. Even Renly deserved reprieve for his loss, regardless of what sort of activities he had been up to before his boyfriend’s death, and Brienne believed it was wrong to set eyes on Renly during his mourning.

 

She couldn’t imagine the thought of suddenly losing Jaime in such a way.

 

“Brienne?” came Jaime’s voice beside her on the bed, his tone filled with concern. The sound of him speaking broke her from her reverie of dark thoughts, and she turned her head to glance down at him. Jaime was looking up at her, the back of his head laying against the bed, his eyes creased at the corners with worry as he gazed at her. It took Brienne a moment to realize her hand had laid itself upon his chest, clenching his shirt tightly in her fist, the material bunched up between her fingers in a death grip.

 

Brienne quickly let go of his shirt, pulling her hand back to herself as she glanced away from him. She breathed in deeply, wondering what had come over her.

 

She felt Jaime’s hand lay itself atop hers in her lap. His fingers curled beneath her palm, his thumb grazing her knuckles. “Is everything all right?” Jaime asked her.

 

Brienne closed her eyes, exhaling a breath. “I’m fine,” she said.

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“Yes,” Brienne said, opening her eyes again. She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes. “I think we have bigger things to worry about than ourselves,” she told him pointedly.

 

Jaime narrowed his eyes at her, but his look was inquisitive more than anything else. “What do you mean?”

 

Brienne raised her thumb to draw it over his fingers, turning her eyes away from Jaime again. “Do you remember that test they did on Sansa at the hospital?” she asked, waiting to feel his reaction through his hand.

 

Jaime’s muscles stiffened suddenly, his hand stilling. “What about it?”

 

“The results came back.”

 

Brienne felt his fingers clench her hand. “What were they?” Jaime asked quickly, and he sat up on the bed, pushing himself upright with his free hand. Jaime was looking directly at her now, and Brienne could see his jaw clenching beneath the surface, the tight line of his muscles noticeable to her eyes.

 

She pursed her lips, almost feeling bad for how she had decided to tell him. She had made Jaime anxious first, but the realization would be worth it.

 

“Sandor Clegane,” Brienne said in a low voice, biting down on her lip afterward. Jaime’s face lit up with a million reactions at once. Shock, disgust, bewilderment, and anger, and Brienne couldn’t tell which one was directed at her. Jaime tore his hand away from hers, getting up from the bed in a hurry.

 

“Oh _god_ —”

 

Brienne’s chest was hurting as she tried to hold in her laughter. Her eyes were watering up, and she bit down hard on her lips to keep them shut.

 

Jaime whirled around suddenly to face her.

 

“What’s _wrong_ with you?” Jaime demanded, pointing his finger at her. “Do you think that’s funny? Do you _think_ I want this mental image in my head?”

 

Brienne’s eyes went wide, her mouth falling open. “Well, _stop_ thinking about it!”

 

“ _You’re_ the one that said it!”

 

Brienne gasped. “You’re the one that wanted to know back at the hospital!” she shot back. “I wasn’t the one listening in on the doctor’s _conversation_!”

 

“Well, you made it sound like something bad!” Jaime accused her right back.

 

“Oh, I was just trying to be funny!” Brienne said, realizing only now that it might not have been the best of ideas.

 

Jaime brought his hands up to his temples, closing his eyes, and suddenly shook his head as if to rid himself of the unwanted thoughts. When he pulled his hands away, he stalked across the room towards the door. “I’m not talking to you for a week,” Jaime announced, leaving their bedroom in a hurry.

 

Brienne felt her jaw come unhinged again as she turned to watch him leave. “Are you serious?” she said, not believing her ears.

 

“Dead serious,” Jaime called out, though he didn’t sound angry to Brienne, and by the distance of his voice, she surmised Jaime had made it to the bathroom. She heard the door shut soundly behind him, and then Brienne heard the sink water running. She didn’t believe his claim of not talking to her for week. Jaime could barely stop talking as it was without her nearly shoving a sock in his mouth. His silence from the last few days had been the most silence she had ever heard out of him, if silence could be heard.

 

Brienne sighed to herself, but she wasn’t worried about Jaime. He wasn’t being serious. Brienne knew it was just his way of getting her back, pretending to be mad, but she could tell he definitely wasn’t very happy about having such news dropped on him like that. Brienne thought it served him right, though. Jaime had been putting his nose in Sandor and Sansa’s business for months now, and it was only right that a little bit of payback had come out of his nosiness. It was what he got for sticking his face where it didn’t belong.

 

She kicked off her shoes using only her feet and pushed herself up from the bed, crossing the room to the closet. There was a floor length mirror set in one of the doors. Brienne stared at her reflection, critical eyes gazing back at her. She looked worse for wear with dark bags under her eyes, messy hair sticking up and out in every direction, and creases at the corners of her mouth and eyes. She looked ten years older. Normally, Brienne didn’t fret about her appearance. It didn’t bother her how she looked as much as how she felt, which was more important, and she felt a sudden twinge of pain as it shot through her arm while she stood there.

 

Grimacing against the ache, Brienne bowed her head. She opened her eyes to the view of her feet against the carpet, and Brienne found her one good hand pressed against the cold glass to steady her as she leaned forward. She heard the water running in the distance as Jaime took a shower, but Brienne didn’t feel like trying to make it to the bathroom to shower herself. She doubted Jaime would let her in there, too. He had probably locked the door. Instead of fretting over it, Brienne slowly stripped down as easily as she could manage with only one hand.

 

With a pile of clothes on the floor at her feet, Brienne turned around and stared at the bed. She crossed the room and walked over to the side of it, pulling back the covers and sliding herself carefully underneath them. It was evening, and outside the sun hung low in the sky. Small rays pierced through the curtains, but the majority of them were blocked from sight. The room was dark, but mildly lit. Brienne lay down on her back, which was only one of two positions she could manage in her condition, and stared up at the ceiling as the feeling of tiredness washed over her. Her eyelids felt heavy, drooping to a close, and she let them fall shut.

 

The sound of running water lulled her into a state halfway between sleep and the waking world, and eventually, the water cut off. Brienne heard it stop, though she barely registered it in her mind. She was half lost to the world. Rummaging noises reached her ears, a thump, and various echoes filled the walls with a deep resonance. Finally, the distant sound of a door opening filtered through the veil of tiredness, and Brienne heard footsteps approaching the bedroom.

 

If Jaime had returned to their bedroom, he didn’t announce it. It was silent, and Brienne tilted her head into the pillow to lay the side of her face against it.

 

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was aware. She expected he would dry off and join her in the bed, cradling the side of her body like a child clutching to his mother. Jaime was fond of cradling against her as they slept, but the silence continued on unhindered, and Brienne felt herself drifting off further. She had not been in her own bed in so long that it was heaven to return to it at last. The pillow was so soft, and the sheets were so smooth against her skin. Brienne was warm, too—warm as she had not been in the hospital during her stay.

 

Jaime dried off with the towel, but he did not join her in the bed. He rummaged through the dresser, grabbed some fresh clothes, and pulled them on before he disappeared from the room, leaving Brienne alone in their bed.

 

She fell asleep, never noticing his absence at her side.

 

 


	101. Smoke and Arrogance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Book references. Book references, everywhere.

_* * *_

 

His hands were cold and clammy, and he balled them at his sides as he walked slowly down the aisle between the chairs. They were little white folding chairs, but the room itself was made of dark mahogany walls and a burgundy carpet set upon a wooden floor. At the end of the room, there were white flowers set in a large arrangement of pots, bouquets, sprays, and wreaths. He couldn’t remember why the flowers were white. Every funeral he had ever been to, the flowers were always white as if it was meant to be peaceful. Maybe the voidance of color was supposed to make people feel the emptiness more keenly, or maybe it was meant to be some sign of purity in death. Sandor never understand why the same colors most popular at weddings were the most popular at funerals as well. White and black, the colors of nothing.

 

His fists clenched more tightly, dull fingernails digging into his palms, with each step forward that he took down the aisle. The room was empty of people for now after having been full of them for the majority of the day. Sandor had wondered when the throngs of vultures would disappear from the side of the casket. All of these people here, and not even half of them had known Loras as he had known him. They were all here for the scenery, for appearances, for the food, and for the publicity. Sandor had avoided the crowds as much as possible, and he had tried his best to stay away from the cameras, too, but this had been a big affair from the very beginning. With Mace Tyrell as the new Prime Minister, the coverage on Loras’s funeral was close to the status of royalty. Not only that, but he had been loved by many as well, even if it had only been in his name or his famous smiles. Loras brought out the crowds, even in his death.

 

Each movement of his left leg was characterized with a wilted movement, a limp which made his gait uneven. His body was still in recovery from the injuries he had sustained at the warehouse. Though Sandor walked unsteadily, it made no difference in his determination to reach the side of Loras’s casket. He was not yet well enough to be out of the hospital, but he had taken a special leave to attend the funeral, and they had allowed him to go. Sandor had dressed warm for the weather beyond the hospital’s walls, freezing temperatures and snowed grounds and strong winds. His coat was thick and warm, and it reached down to his feet, grazing against the floor as he walked. Even in this enclosed inside space, it felt hot beneath the trappings of his clothing. Sandor had gloves on his hands, a scarf wrapped about his neck, a hood on his coat, which had been thrown back, and it left his face exposed to view.

 

When he reached the casket at last, he found himself taking one step forward as slow as possible, and then another, until he laid his hand against the edge of the casket as he stopped beside it. Sandor’s fingers were gloved, but he could feel the smoothness beneath his fingertips. It was only the finest for Loras Tyrell. It was the same in death as it had been for him in life, and his family had personally seen to every single detail of the arrangement.

 

Despite the gunshot wound to the head, they had taken painstaking care to make it an open casket. Sandor couldn’t imagine what they had been through to make that happen, nor did he want to know. The boy were a hat on low on his head, though, as if it was meant to help cover up the damage done by the bullet. There was a trail of sewn skin, held together by clear stitches, reaching down between Loras’s eyes towards the upper bridge of his nose from somewhere beneath the hat on his head. Loras’s hands were folded nice and neatly upon his chest, but it was all wrong. The color had been drained from his hands, making them as pale as milk, but his face was full of color. Fake color, Sandor surmised, as he noticed the evidence of makeup on the boy’s face to give Loras’s features more color. It was as if they had to have him look his most alive.

 

It wasn’t as if Loras was coming back to them, though. Dead was dead, and dead was permanent. Sandor didn’t think there was a point in making him look more alive than dead. _He ought to look dead_ , Sandor thought as a grim look overtook his face. If they expected to mourn Loras and let him go, then he should look dead, not half-alive as if he was merely sleeping on a bed of roses. Maybe that was why so many people had trouble letting go at funerals, Sandor thought. It was partly because they painted up their dead like living people, and then cried and sobbed when they kissed their loved one’s cold cheeks and got no response back from the dead.

 

Sandor raised his hand from the wood of the casket and tugged the glove off of that hand. He slid the glove into his coat pocket in an absent manner as he stared down at Loras. Once he had tucked the glove away, he reached out hesitantly for Loras’s hand, but his own hand hovered in the air just a few inches above Loras’s folded hands. Sandor wasn’t sure what was holding him back, but he felt it, and it was a strong feeling. He wasn’t sure if it was revulsion at the idea of touching a cold and rigid corpse because it felt so unnatural or if it was just nonacceptance towards Loras’s death long after the fact of it. Sandor had remembered looking down at Loras beneath a dark night sky with the flash of lights around them. The memory seemed so surreal now in broad daylight, but it had been real then, and he knew it. There was no changing the reality of the situation.

 

Loras was dead, and he wasn’t coming back.

 

He could not recall mourning anyone before, save the distant childhood memory of his sister, but even that felt lost to him. He had mourned lost chances, forsaken hopes, paths he might have chosen that he never took. Sandor had made many mistakes in his life, but it was his life and they were his mistakes. No one had gotten close to him before, save for Loras and Sansa. Sandor had made it his duty to keep people at arm’s length. They were plenty of people he liked, but very few he could call friends. He knew Davos, and he liked the guy, but they bullshitted together at the bar. They didn’t hang out after work, and Sandor had never met his wife either.

 

Renly had been his boss for years, but they had never been friends. Sandor never knew Renly like he knew Loras. Out of all of the people in his life, Loras had done the most for Sandor. He had been there for Sandor. He had risked his neck for Sandor. Loras had been the willful boy who looked up to Sandor in a way. He had wanted to be as strong as Sandor, but when he grew into his height, he was nowhere near Sandor’s size. Loras liked to show off in fights, and he had gotten himself into a street fight he couldn’t win with Sandor’s brother, Gregor Clegane. Sandor had intervened, stopped the fight, as people from the crowd had gotten Loras to safety. Loras could have died that night, but Sandor had saved his life.

 

He hadn’t been there to save Loras a second time, though. Loras had met Gregor on the street once more, and even with a gun in his hands, he was no match for the Mountain. Gregor had made sure to take his life this time, knowing not only what it would mean for Renly, but what it would mean for Sandor. He had done that on purpose. Everything had been on purpose, and everything had been his fault. Gregor had gone after Sansa for the same reason. Someone had told Gregor what she meant to him, and Gregor had taken it upon himself to take away the only things in Sandor’s life that mattered to him. Sansa’s kidnapping had been planned, but Loras had been an accident. In Gregor’s eyes the boy must been a shiny prize the moment he drove up in that police car, tires screeching along the asphalt, lights flashing, and siren wailing.

 

Gregor had finished what he had started years ago, finally putting Loras Tyrell’s body in a polished wooden casket. Margaery Tyrell had been weeping her eyes out, red-faced and willful, but the other women in his family stood strong. It was the men, Sandor thought, who looked weaker for the loss. Loras Tyrell was well-loved, not only by the public but within his own family, and Sandor knew Loras had been the closest with his sister, Margaery. Sandor had seen Sansa standing by Margaery’s side the whole time at the funeral home, the two of them holding hands like they were sisters. Margaery had clutched so tightly onto Sansa’s hand that her knuckles had turned a ghostly white, and Sansa looked like she might have been in pain. It showed in her expression, but she bore it and said nothing to make Margaery loosen her grip on her hand.

 

Pushing past the feeling of reluctance that had stalled his hand, he finally laid it against Loras’s cold, folded fingers. They were rigid to the touch, as hard as rock, and icy but dry. It was an unnatural feeling that made Sandor’s skin crawl. There were few things that he didn’t like, and embalmed bodies were one of them. He thought that once the viewing was over he would go straight home and skip the funeral itself. They wouldn’t let him sit near the front, no matter how much of a friend he had been to Loras, and Sandor had not come here for the rest of them. He had only come here for Loras, and Loras was right here in front of him now. This was all he needed of today. He didn’t need a service. He didn’t need empty words or a preacher going on about the afterlife. Sandor had just wanted to say goodbye, and this was his chance to do it without interruption in the privacy of the empty room of the funeral parlor.

 

Sandor had lost a brother, but the loss was not in blood.

 

He didn’t bow his head. He didn’t say a prayer either. He stared down at Loras, and though the feeling of hard, cold skin bothered him, Sandor forced himself to hold Loras’s hands by curling his fingers around them. Loras had been a young, stubborn boy with the world ahead of him, a bright future on the horizon, but he had charged ahead into the fire. It was for a noble cause, but the end result was the same. Sometimes, Sandor thought, cowardice was better than nobility when it saved a life. He was no coward, and yet he was. Loras had always seen him as a brave man, but the truth was a different story. Sandor had never acknowledged it out loud for the longest time, and it had taken Elder Brother to make Sandor see how he was crippled by fear.

 

Fear of acceptance. Fear of rejection. Fear of friendship. Fear of loss. Fear of love. Fear of the cold, hard, and bitter truth. Sandor had prided himself for years on his so-called honesty, but as much as Sandor could dish it out, he couldn’t take it. He could tear people apart all day long, but if a chink in his armor was pointed out, the rage set in and became uncontrollable. He had lived his life on hate to save himself from pain, and never realized he had created all of his pain himself. It was ironic in a sad way, and when Sansa had come along, Sandor realized that living a normal life was simply not enough. He had only been existing, getting through the days one by one with work and routines, not really living. Sandor had been holding himself back from that.

 

The sound of careful, calculated footsteps filled his ears, heels falling on the rug behind him. The steps were that of a woman. Sandor knew he wouldn’t have had much time to say his goodbye before the room was filled again. The viewing was for friends and family only, and once they drove out for the public service, even more people would be hounding Loras’s corpse. The boy would find no peace until they laid him in the ground.

 

He pulled his hand back from Loras as the footsteps came to a stop beside him. It was pure silence at first, and Sandor turned his head towards the left just in the slightest measure to see if he could catch a glimpse of the face. His eyes caught a flash of red beneath black and golden blonde hair, long and flowing. Her silence was unnatural against all of the crying, and it put Sandor’s nerves on edge.

 

When she spoke, her voice was unfamiliar to him.

 

“It’s so sad,” she said, sounding not in the least bit affected by the death, “to take away a life so young when he had so much ahead of him.”

 

Sandor glanced away from her to look forward again. The open casket door was filled with cream-colored satin cushioning. Beyond that, his vision was obscured by white flower bouquets.

 

“Did you know him?” he asked.

 

She took another step forward, looking down into Loras’s coffin. Putting her side to it, Sandor watched from the corner of his eyes as she laid one of her hands on the wooden edge. The woman knitted her brow together as if attempting to make sense of the scene before her, but to no avail. She made a face, glancing away.

 

“Not very well, I’m afraid,” she told Sandor, removing her hand from the coffin. “He was more of a friend of the family than anything else.”

 

 _He was my only friend_ , Sandor thought, feeling a pang in his chest, but he kept his thoughts to himself. Raising his chin higher, he drew in a sharp breath.

 

“He was a good friend,” Sandor admitted out loud. It was vague enough that she could take from it what she willed.

 

The woman glanced over at him. “Was he?” she asked.

 

Sandor looked at her. There was something about the tone of her voice. Slowly, he turned around to face her, moving one foot at a time until both were placed flat on the rug again. She was familiar to him, even if he didn’t know the sound of her voice. He knew her face. He had seen her on the television before for local news. She was the mayor’s wife.

 

 _Cersei Lannister_ , Sandor thought. He felt the corner of his mouth twitch in anger. She was the mother of that prick, Joffrey Baratheon, the one who had hit Sansa. If that wasn’t the worst of it, she was Jaime Lannister’s twin sister. Better than that, she was the daughter of Tywin Lannister. Sandor had three good reasons to hate her, and he wasn’t keen on giving her the time of day if he could help it.

 

“What do you mean?” Sandor asked her, amusing her line of questioning for the moment. He wasn’t going to make a scene at Loras’s viewing.

 

Cersei lifted her chin. Her pale green eyes glittered softly, giving her an innocent appearance. There was even a gentle smile on her face, but he saw right through it.

 

“I was merely asking,” Cersei provided, turning to Loras and gesturing at him with a single hand. “You seem to have fond memories of him. No need to share them if you do not feel comfortable, but they say funerals are meant for these sort of things—opening up, sharing feelings and memories. Remembering the dead fondly.”

 

Her voice trailed off softly, and Sandor returned his gaze to Loras.

 

He wasn’t about to share his fond memories of Loras with her of all people. “I’m good,” Sandor said curtly, nodding his head once. Cersei, however, didn’t want to take no for an answer.

 

“They say it’s good to make new friends when you suffer a loss,” Cersei replied in a coy manner, and if it wasn’t in Sandor’s imagination, she also moved a few inches closer to him. “No one can replace what you have lost, but times like these call for support, and new friends . . . ” She reached out, carefully laying her hand on top of his. “ . . . Can help with that.”

 

Sandor didn’t know what she was getting at, but he knew whatever it was that it wasn’t innocent. He tugged his hand out from underneath hers, and Cersei lifted her own hand quickly. It hovered in the air as if his suddenly removed touch had burned her. She balled her fingers into her fist, and even if it was only out of the corner of his eyes, Sandor could see her expression shift from sympathy to one of fury and offense. She schooled it away as quickly as possible, turning her face away from him.

 

“For the record,” Sandor told her, feeling his throat tighten at his irritation, “we wouldn’t make a good team. You’re the mother of Joffrey Baratheon, aren’t you? The little shit who beat Sansa Stark at a Halloween party a few months back with the help of his friends?” Sandor looked at her, and her tightly controlled expression barely held itself together. “No,” he said flippantly, and he shook his head as if he couldn't find the will to care, “I don’t think we would make a good team at all.”

 

“I know your little friend, Renly, was involved,” Cersei revealed, unable to stop herself from saying it. “If he thinks he can get away with it—”

 

“Involved with what?”

 

Cersei paused, turning her head just slightly to survey Sandor’s expression. She narrowed her eyes, lowering them to his chin before raising them back to meet his eyes. “My father,” she said, choosing her words carefully.

 

Sandor snorted, turning away from her to look back at the casket. “Right,” he threw back mockingly, his voice acidic, “Renly was involved with that. Just as he was rushing down the road to cradle the dead body of his lover in his arms after he received the news, he took a pit stop on the way to place a couple of slugs into Tywin Lannister.”

 

Sandor doubted Renly had anything to do with it, and even if he did, Sandor didn’t give two shits. He wasn’t going to go out of his way to protect Renly, but he also wasn’t going to throw the man over to the Lannisters if they were out for his blood. Sandor didn’t owe the man anything anymore, at least not the way he saw it, but he owed the Lannisters even less.

 

Cersei was quiet beside him, but she radiated with internal wrath. Sandor could feel it like it was heat wafting towards him, smoldering and hard to breathe.

 

“You think you’re _funny_ ,” she said.

 

“We all have our talents,” Sandor threw back.

 

“Yes,” Cersei agreed, moving closer to him and lowering her voice, “we all have our talents, as you say.” Cersei laid her hand on his arm this time, but her touch was not soft like before. Her fingers were stiff, and they clamped down on him. “Your involvement in the plot against my father, for instance. Did you think I wouldn’t find out about that? Not all mouths are sealed with vows of silence, and many of them speak with the right persuasions.”

 

Sandor tensed up at her words, and he was afraid she could feel it through her hand on his arm. “Is that so?” he asked her.

 

“Yes,” she said, practically hissing the word, “that’s so.”

 

“Only one problem,” Sandor told her. “There’s a hole in your plan. You can’t pin anything on me without exposing yourself and your brother, and what a scandal that would be. It would make a good newspaper headline. ‘Cersei Lannister,’” he feigned to read out loud. “’Brother-fucker: Mayor’s Children Are Not His Own—’”

 

Cersei’s hand left his arm. Before Sandor knew it, she reeled back and slapped him hard across the face. The imprint of her hand stung against his cheek, but Sandor refused to raise a hand to his face to cover the mark she had left. Instead, he turned around slowly to face her again. Cersei’s face was livid, and her green eyes were like flashing coals.

 

“Make all the jokes you like,” Cersei said coldly, “but I know where your true weakness lies. That little Stark girl, the one here today. Barely even a woman, but I bet you like them small and young and reminiscent of children . . . ”

 

Sandor’s jaw tightened, his teeth grating together behind his closed lips.

 

Cersei stepped closer until she was only a few inches from him, looking up into his face. “I bet you’ve already plucked her sweet little flower,” she whispered. “Taken her out back and fucked her like a dog, haven’t you?” Her eyes fell down to his jaw, where his muscles flexed beneath the surface. Slowly, she raised her eyes back to his face. Cersei could see he was on edge. “Go on,” she urged him. “ _Slap_ me.”

 

It was a dare made to push him, but it was a dare he wasn’t going to take. Sandor wasn’t about to slap a woman in public or anywhere, especially the mayor’s wife at that, and definitely not at the funeral for a police officer who used to be his friend. If she thought he had so little control over himself, then she was mistaken.

 

“I have better things to do,” Sandor told her quietly, but he was barely holding his own anger in check.

 

“Oh, I’m sure you do,” Cersei murmured back. “That sweet little dove of yours. I’m sure she’s it. You should be more careful about bringing people too close to you like that, you know. You see, that closeness can be manipulated. People can take advantage of it. They can twist it to their benefit . . . ”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he growled through clenched teeth.

 

Cersei grinned at him, a crooked smile that flaunted her teeth. “Of course you do,” she whispered, leaning closer to Sandor. Cersei tilted her chin upward. The smile faded from her face, leaving a calm and centered expression in its wake. “I am my father’s daughter,” she warned with the softness of a woman’s voice, yet there was anything but softness in the threat.

 

Sandor knew that Tywin Lannister was behind Gregor’s bloody rampage, even if Gregor had wanted for the longest time to get his revenge on Sandor. Tywin had given Gregor the keys, and he had let the monster go unchecked through the city to do as he pleased. Sandor knew that Tywin’s motivation had been twofold with Renly on one side and Sandor on the opposite. However, he didn’t know how far Tywin’s knowledge had gone. Sandor wasn’t sure if Tywin was aware of Oberyn Martell’s involvement or that of his daughters.

 

Tywin had given Gregor the instructions to kill, though. Gregor had gone after Sansa on Tywin’s orders—and Cersei was her father’s daughter.

 

The threat was all too real, and all too fresh.

 

Sandor pushed aside the turmoil, trying to think instead, and he came up with a worthy lie. He snorted, turning away from her. “Good luck with that,” Sandor stated flatly. “We’re over, anyway.” He looked back at Cersei, scowling in almost an amused way. “Unless you plan on kidnapping my one-night stands?”

 

Cersei narrowed her eyes. “You’re lying,” she said below her breath.

 

Sandor laughed deep in his throat, a scratchy hum. “Keep telling yourself that,” he said. “You women are good at that. Now, if you’ll excuse me—” He pushed past her, refusing to look back, and maintaining a loose walk as he limped away from her. Sandor couldn’t hide the limp, but he didn’t have a choice. He avoided the crowd and turned towards the exit, stepping out of the funeral home. It was chilly beyond the doors, but it wasn’t quite freezing anymore. The winds had died down considerably. The snow on the ground was melting, turning into puddles and little rivers running through the gutters. Sandor looked up at the sky. It was filled with grey clouds. It looked like it was going to rain.

 

He hid in the shadows outside of the funeral home, waiting for everyone to leave it. Sandor took note of the names and faces of those he recognized as they piled out of the double doors. He saw Cersei eventually leave with Robert, Joffrey, and their other two kids at their sides long after Sansa had left with Margaery and the rest of the Tyrells. The procession took off slowly down the road, and when most of the vehicles had all left, Sandor emerged from the shadows and flagged down a cab. He got into the backseat, told the cab driver to follow the procession, and fell into silence in the backseat as they pulled off slowly from the curb to join the path of cars on the road.

 

Sandor wasn’t going to take part in the funeral itself. He wasn’t going to sit with the rest of the people, but he was going to watch it from afar. He wanted to keep an eye on Sansa, not to mention Cersei and Joffrey. Sandor needed to make sure that nothing would happen to Sansa, and if he went back to the hospital now, he wouldn’t be able to do that. Sansa may have been by Margaery’s side, but Sandor didn’t trust that Cersei couldn’t think of something to separate the two girls if the thought crossed her mind. Sandor didn’t know what Cersei was playing at with what she said at the funeral home, but he had to see if she would risk it.

 

He had to make sure that Sansa would be safe with the lie.

 

By the time the cab reached the cemetery grounds, a light downpour had begun to fall from the sky. It was a drizzle more than anything. Sandor pulled his hood over his head, covering himself with the wide-brimmed cowl of his brown coat. It was thick, and it would shelter him from the rain. He paid the cab driver and got out of the backseat, stepping onto the sidewalk. Sandor stood there as the cab drove off, and he waited in the rain as he watched all of the people making their way towards the plot with its setup of chairs and a sheltered podium.

 

For any other person and any other funeral, he imagined everything would have been smaller, but this one was big. He wasn’t even sure how long it took for all of the people to get settled in their seats. Sandor didn’t look at his watch, but it felt like almost an hour before the service began on the podium. He walked until he found a tree to seek shelter underneath, using its thick foliage to block most of the rainfall. He was cold, even with his coat, and his body had begun to feel like a shiver would take him on at any moment.

 

Various people came on stage to talk. Sandor saw a preacher, multiple members of Loras’s family, but Margaery never ascended the stage. She sat in her seat in the front row with Sansa at her side. He wondered briefly if they still held hands, clutching onto each other for dear life. Margaery must have insisted to her family to let Sansa sit in the area usually designated for family only, but it only brought more attention to Sansa. It was more than she wanted to have, too. Sandor had seen her shying away from the cameras and the flashing lights, especially after the coverage that had been done on her own kidnapping. It was city gossip, all over the news, and her appearance and place of honor with the Tyrell family at Loras’s funeral only brought even more attention to her. She wouldn’t escape the public eye so easily with Margaery bringing her to the forefront like this.

 

He felt the left corner of his mouth twitch in irritation. Sandor tried to subdue the feeling, though. Margaery was only seeking comfort from a friend, but he wished the girl realized how uncomfortable it made Sansa. Either way, he wasn’t going to interrupt the service over it. Instead, he turned his eyes to Cersei and Joffrey, finding them halfway to the back of the crowd. It was an understatement to say the Tyrells were a big family. They had a lot of friends who were much closer to them than their public acquaintances. Cersei did not look happy, but neither did her brat of a son. Robert and the other two children were the only ones who had any decency to look like they were attending an actual funeral.

 

Sandor saw a new person walking onto the platform. He spotted the familiar top of Renly’s hair immediately. Renly was dressed head to toe in black, and where he normally held his head high with pride, it was bowed low as he stepped onto the podium. It was quiet for several seconds before he spoke. Sandor listened to his speech at first, but eventually, he tuned the words out and all he heard was the falling rain as it pattered softly against the leaves above his head or the fallen foliage upon the ground. Sandor watched as Renly left the podium, choking on his own tears, and he watched as they finished the service and lowered the body into the ground.

 

When the service was finally over, Sandor left the tree and took cover by one of the large monuments nearby. He didn’t want to be seen as everyone filed out of the cemetery and departed in their vehicles. Eventually, from a distance, Sandor spotted Sansa and Margaery still together with the rest of Margaery’s family. He watched as they lingered on the grounds while everyone else left them. Sandor was glad for Margaery now. Without even knowing it, Margaery was keeping an eye on Sansa for him, and he was grateful.

 

However, Margaery turned to Sansa at one point and leaned in close to speak in her ear. Sandor narrowed his eyes as Margaery pulled away from Sansa, and he saw Sansa nod her head in agreement. The girls then separated, letting go of each other’s hands as Margaery walked off from Sansa. Sansa was left standing there all alone, looking around herself as if she was lost, and she held her small purse in both of her hands, twisting it nervously.

 

Sandor emerged from behind the monument and took a step forward, but as he did, he froze. A familiar shock of golden blonde hair passed through the mass of black, making its way towards Sansa. He was going to go to her, but he had been too late. He was too far, and she was too close.

 

Cersei linked her arm with Sansa’s elbow as if they were the best of friends with years between them, but Sansa’s face was full of discomfort, though she tried her best to hide it. Sandor wasn’t blind to it, though. Cersei spoke to her, and it took Sandor a moment to realize she was asking Sansa questions. Sansa’s eyes lit up, and she looked up at the dispersing crowd as if to find one face in particular . . .

 

Sandor moved as quickly as possible, hiding on the other side of the monument. Sansa was looking for him.

 

He could lie to Cersei all day long, but Sansa didn’t know any better.

 

Leaning against the hard stone, Sandor rested his head as he balled his fists at his sides and gritted his teeth. His dull nails dug deep, drawing blood. He couldn’t protect Sansa from Cersei. Short of locking Sansa away in a box for the rest of her life, there was nothing Sandor could do to protect her if she stayed with him. His past would follow them around everywhere they went. If it wasn’t Renly, it was Cersei. If it wasn’t Cersei, it would be someone else. There was always someone out there who knew who he was, who knew of things he had done. He had never thought of himself as a man with enemies, but it seemed like they were stacking up, and there was nothing he could do to stop them from coming.

 

There was one thing he could do, though. There was always one thing he could do.

 

Pushing himself from the monument, Sandor walked straight forward to stay out of sight. He tried his best to disappear into the crowd, his hood shielding his face from the rain. He walked with a limp all the way to the edge of the street, hailing a cab as one pulled up, and stepped inside to vanish from sight.

 

The drive back to the hospital was in complete silence except for the radio, and he paid the cab driver when they arrived at their destination. Sandor kept on his coat as he walked through the halls, trailing little droplets of water everywhere. When he made back to his room, he shed his coat and threw it over the chair. He made his way to the bed and sat down, feeling utterly exhausted, and all he had done was attend a funeral. His lungs were heavy, and it was hard to breathe.

 

Sandor kicked off his shoes, lying down on the bed. He pushed the nurse button on his bedside remote, feeling his breath quicken dangerously. His lung still was not fully healed from its puncture wound, not to mention everything else that was wrong with his body right now, and sometimes he would get out of breath like in this moment. It wasn’t physical exertion, though. It was nerves more than it was that. Sandor was fit physically, but if he wasn’t calm, then his heart rate escalated and his breathing sped up too fast, and his body wasn’t in proper shape to handle it.

 

Within minutes, a nurse appeared in his room. She noticed his ragged breathing before he could even point to his chest or say anything, and with a silent nod of understanding, the woman prepared an oxygen mask for him. She placed it over his face, hooking the elastic straps behind his ears, and Sandor closed his eyes as he let his head fall back.

 

She was chiding him about leaving the hospital, but Sandor barely heard a word she said to him. His eyelids fluttered, falling shut, as a peaceful calmness spread throughout his mind. There was something about pure oxygen that could make a person relax against any obstacle that stood in their way. It was a feeling of being high, floating on something soft and comforting, and a gentle hum filled his head as he breathed more of it into his lungs. He found himself drifting off, not quite asleep but not quite awake either, his head tilting over to the side.

 

He wasn’t dreaming, and yet he was. He saw Sansa ahead of him, trailing too far out of reach. She was smiling at him, and sometimes she laughed as well. Sandor tried to keep up with her, but everything was a blur. It was foggy and unclear, and the further he moved forward, the thicker the fog became until he could no longer see her, but he could hear her. Sansa’s giggle became an echo, calling out to him, but she was nowhere to be found.

 

He saw her hand reaching out to him from the mist, white and grey like smoke. It filled the sky around them. He saw her face for just an instant, and there was a smile on her lips, her auburn hair in delicate curls that bounced as she laughed out loud and took a step back from him.

 

He reached out for Sansa’s hand, but it slipped away from him into the smoke, and just like that, she was gone. He tried to reach out for her, but nothing was there. It was only smoke he grasped at with his fingers.

 

She was gone, but Sandor could still hear Sansa’s giggle like an echo around him.

 

 


	102. Spend Her Love Until She’s Broke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Book references. Book references, everywhere. Yet again.

_* * *_

 

Her arms were cold, and she had to fold them over her chest to conserve the warmth that was fleeing from her. The scarf around her neck caught in the wind and blew to the side, the fringe dancing in the wind. The biting chill stung her cheeks pink, and Sansa looked up at Sandor’s apartment building with squinted eyes to protect them against the wind and a sinking feeling that began to develop in the pit of her stomach. Sansa searched left and right with her gaze, wondering which windows were his. She couldn’t pinpoint which ones belonged to Sandor’s apartment, though, nor could she know for certain if he was even inside, so she turned away and returned to her father’s car parked alongside the road.

 

Sansa had driven herself here, borrowing her father’s vehicle, to check on Sandor after his released from the hospital. She had visited him only three days during the last two weeks, but with school starting back, she hadn’t had time to go and see Sandor as much as she had wanted to. School wasn’t a good escape from the last few weeks either. The moment she had stepped past those front doors, it felt like everyone’s heads had turned in her direction and all eyes were on her ever since. News had traveled fast about Arya and Sansa’s kidnappings, and neither of them could find escape from the stares that followed them around everywhere they went, whether it was in school or on the street. She was getting used to the funny way people looked at her, though. It wasn’t so bad. No one had the nerve to say anything to her, which made it easier.

 

Sandor hadn’t told her when he was going to be released from the hospital, so she hadn’t known when to expect it. She had gotten out much sooner than him, but Sandor’s injuries had been much worse than her wounds. When Sansa had found a chance to come and visit him again today, she had been shocked when they informed her that Sandor had been released to return home. He had been unusually quiet the last time she had visited him. Sansa had sat beside him on the side of the bed, telling him of her week and how school had been going for her, but he had been looking away most of the time without a word spoken to her. Finally, when Sansa had tried to smile and touch his cheek, Sandor turned away from her hand to avoid it. The action had caused her to pull back, feeling stung by his evasion of her touch. Sandor had explained it by saying he was just tired, and then he asked if she could leave him alone for a while.

 

The memory brought back a familiar sting to her eyes, but Sansa blinked back the possibility of tears. She pulled open the car door and moved into the driver’s seat, shutting the door behind her. She took in a deep breath to calm her nerves. It wasn’t like Sandor to avoid her, especially not after everything they had been through together. She had gone up to his apartment door, and she had knocked for ten minutes straight without an answer from the other side. She wasn’t going to search the parking lot for his car, but she hadn’t seen it parked anywhere out front when she had pulled up. If he was here, she would know it.

 

He wasn’t here.

 

Sansa wasn’t going to cry, though. Given everything that had happened, maybe Sandor just needed some time alone to deal with it. He wasn’t good with sharing his emotions, and Sansa knew that. It seemed normal enough, Sansa told herself, hoping the words in her head were enough to convince her. She cranked the car and pulled it out of park, looking over her shoulder to guide the way. The heat flooded the car again, warming up her cold face and hands, as she began to drive back to her house on Winterfell Avenue. The radio played a pop song quietly in the background, but Sansa barely heard the music.

 

It wasn’t very often that Sansa could get a chance to drive, even though she had her license, so she turned away from the path that would have brought her home and headed in the opposite direction. Cruising at a slow speed, Sansa watched with dull eyes as the grey and foggy world beyond the windows passed her by. As she drove, the sun set below the horizon, darkening the sky above from grey to deep blue to a solid black at last. With all of the clouds sheltering the sky from the sunlight, the darkness came upon the world quickly.

 

Despite the heat pouring out of the vents, she began to feel cold again. A shiver passed down her spine, and Sansa turned around at the end of the street where it merged with another, circling back around to head home. As she drove towards a green light, it switched over to yellow, and Sansa pressed her foot down on the brake pedal. However, as she did so, she heard a loud _pop_ from outside of the vehicle, and suddenly, it began to tilt to the right. Sansa had to pull hard on the wheel to prevent it from running off of the road, but she continued to press her foot down on the pedal, bringing the car to a stop on the side of the street.

 

Sansa knew what it was. She sighed deeply, wondering at her bad stroke of luck today, and put the car into park before opening the door to get out. She hugged herself to stay warm as she stepped around the car to the other side, finding the front passenger wheel deflated and the car sunk low to the ground. Sansa’s heart sank, and she looked up to glance both ways down the street, but the street was empty, and no one was there.

 

Stubbornly, Sansa stood there for fifteen minutes in the freezing cold until a car’s headlights appeared in the distance from the direction she had come from on her way to a flat tire. Truth be told, she had tried to change tires before, but she just wasn’t any good at it. Sansa always got stuck on the lug nuts because she lacked the upper body strength to make them move. As the vehicle pulled up to her, it slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road as well, creeping up behind her father’s car until it came to a stop. Sansa shielded her eyes against the bright light, wondering who it was. Honestly, she should have been scared to death of strange cars pulling up to her after what happened the last time, but Sansa didn’t feel any fear. The worst had already happened to her. At this point, she felt like she could take anything the world threw at her.

 

The driver side door opened up with a loud creak as a man stepped out of it, and he slammed the door shut behind himself. Sansa recognized the man’s stiff gait before she could see his face beyond the flood of the headlights. When he came into view, walking in front of the vehicle’s headlights, Sansa knew his face. She knew him, and she definitely wasn’t afraid of him.

 

A small smile lit her expression, and Sansa held her hand out to him.

 

“Mr. Baratheon,” Sansa greeted him, and he walked up to her, glancing down at her proffered hand. Stannis Baratheon had never been a warm man, but he had always been an honest man. He was dressed in a long black coat, which reached down to his knees, and he wore a grey sweater underneath. His dark gray hair was receding from his forehead, but he kept it shaven close to the scalp. It went with the stern quality of his gaunt face.

 

He stared at her hand with a wrinkled expression on his face, before he reached out and took her hand for a gentle but firm shake.

 

“Sansa,” Stannis said in his equally stiff voice. “What are you doing out here this late by yourself?” he asked immediately after, sounding as if he was criticizing her choice and not coming upon an accident. “I heard all over the news you were just kidnapped. Do you think it wise to be out on the street like this?”

 

Sansa had to repress the urge to roll her eyes at his questions. Stannis Baratheon often meant well, but the permanent rigid tone of his voice made him sound like he hated everything and everyone with an equal passion on both sides.

 

“I was just driving home,” she explained to him, “and I got a flat.”

 

Stannis scrunched his face up further before giving her a curt nod. “Ah,” he said, as if Sansa’s explanation covered everything he needed to know. He turned away from her to look at his car. “Edric!” Stannis called out. “Come out!”

 

Sansa turned to watch as the passenger door opened up. A young man stepped out of the car, closing the door behind himself with the same force as Stannis. He walked up to the two of them, glancing skeptically between Sansa and Stannis. Edric had black shaggy hair, blue eyes, and a strong build with broad shoulders. He had a stern face, but his eyes were bright. Strangely, he reminded Sansa very much of Gendry.

 

“This is my nephew, Edric, Sansa,” Stannis told her, gesturing at the young man with one of his hands. Sansa took the time to nod at Edric, and he nodded back at her, but they didn’t have a chance to exchange words before Stannis continued to talk. “She has a flat fire. Be a good lad, and change it for her.”

 

He had a way with making requests sound more like demands, but Edric had no complaints. He followed his uncle’s instruction without uttering a word. Sansa watched as Edric walked over to the trunk on their car to grab some supplies he needed to fix her tire. Stannis stood by Sansa with his hands in his coat pockets as Edric gathered them, and she found herself soon glancing up at his face again under the flood of their car’s headlights.

 

Sansa guessed that Stannis wasn’t going to help Edric with such a menial task. It was enough to make her smile with amusement, but Sansa had to fight it off. She didn’t want Stannis to see it.

 

“So, how’s school?” Stannis asked, his tone still stern, but Sansa entertained him all the same by answering his question while Edric trudged back to her car and set up a jack on the ground below her car.

 

“It’s going good,” she said. “I’ll be graduating in less than four months. Focusing is easy,” she added, and then she remembered why. She was a social pariah at the moment because of what had happened to her, and everyone had left her alone so far. On one hand, Sansa was grateful for it. She was able to spend more time on her schoolwork, but on the other hand, she missed the company of other people around her. Sansa was used to having lots of friends surrounding her, but she was down to a select few now. “I have plenty of time to myself,” she finished in a soft voice, trying to sound happy about it.

 

“Good,” Stannis said curtly. “Focus on your studies and finish school. Too many girls your age focus on boys and lose sight of the bigger picture. I have to remind Shireen to stay on top of things and stop daydreaming more often than I want to. She’s a smart girl, but she’s got her head stuck in the clouds.”

 

Sansa hadn’t seen Shireen in ages. She frowned at the realization as it came over her. Shireen would be about Bran’s age now. Sansa had seen a lot of Shireen back when she was still dating Joffrey because Shireen and Joffrey were cousins, but things had changed so fatefully at the beginning of last summer that Sansa’s life had never been the same since. She turned to watch as Edric put the spare on her father’s car. Stannis was saying something else to her, but Sansa barely heard it. His voice faded into the background like smoke.

 

Her gaze was locked on Edric as he worked with the lug nut wrench, and she felt her brow furrow as she pondered on his uncanny resemblance to Gendry. Sansa wondered why that was, why two strangers would look so much alike, but then Edric was finished with his task. He pushed himself up from the ground, closed her father’s trunk, and carried the wrench and jack back to his uncle’s trunk.

 

Stannis clapped a hand on Sansa’s shoulder, but surprisingly, his hand only laid there. Stannis didn’t grasp her shoulder. For such a rigid man, Sansa thought, he had a soft touch. “We’ll follow you back to your house, Sansa,” Stannis told her, “and make sure you get home safely.”

 

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Barath—”

 

“I _insist_ ,” Stannis said, giving her a small push towards her father’s vehicle. His hand let go of her shoulder, but when Sansa turned to face him, he was already walking back to his car. She opened and closed her mouth, finding no words to say. Edric was in the car long before Stannis, but by the time she got the courage to speak, Stannis had opened his car door and stepped back inside. Sansa stared on feebly as Stannis shut the door behind himself.

 

Turning away from the bright lights, Sansa walked back to her father’s car to get back inside. It was nice to get out of the cold. Sansa realized she was shivering all over after standing out there for so long. She glanced up at the lights gleaming in her rearview mirror. Stannis was waiting on her. Sansa let out a soft sigh, pulling the car out of park. The tires rolled against the street with the crunch of pebbles on the asphalt, and the light was red, so Sansa had to wait for it to turn green. As it changed, she drove slowly on the path towards her house. Stannis followed in his car behind her.

 

It wasn’t long before she pulled into the driveway at her house, but Stannis kept driving past her house, though his car moved slowly as if to let him keep an eye on her still. Sansa turned off the engine, pocketed her father’s keys, and stepped out of the vehicle. She was glad to be home again, but her mother’s new car was missing from the driveway.

 

 _They must’ve gone somewhere while I was out_ , Sansa thought with a frown creasing her lips. Her brow wrinkled, too. All of the lights in the house were out, save for the porch light, which shone a bright eerie shade of green out into the night. Bran had painted it with a special paint for Christmas, but the paint had faded because of all the bad weather. Sansa hated the color. She had wished they had changed the light bulb already back to a normal one, but with everything going on, a light bulb was probably the last thing on everyone’s minds.

 

Sansa trudged up to the front door and unlocked it with her key. As she stepped inside, she turned around to look out at the street. Stannis drove off out of sight, and she lowered her eyes as she shut the front door. Out of a sudden impulse, Sansa twisted the lock with a satisfying _click_.

 

It was silent in the house, and it was dark. Sansa fumbled for a light switch in the living room, cutting on the small one by the doorway. It lit up a small area with a soft orange glow, and Sansa pulled off her coat to hang it by the door. She pulled off her scarf as well, hanging it on the hood of her coat. Once she was done, she walked over to the coffee table and dropped her father’s keys on top of it. They rang loudly in the silence, but it didn’t bother Sansa. She headed up the staircase to the second floor. It looked like no one was home, so she was going to enjoy the time to herself if she could—but being alone with her thoughts was one thing in her mind, and it was another thing entirely in practice.

 

As she made her way up the staircase, Sansa ran her palm along the balustrade. It was smooth and cool to the touch, but she almost tripped on something in her way by her feet. Sansa caught the balustrade to steady herself, glancing down at her feet just in time to see a pair of shiny silver candlesticks tumble away from her. They clattered down the stairs, making a string of loud noises until they hit the bottom. Sansa stared at them, blinking openly in shock, and lifted her gaze back to the banister. The stairwell was still smothered in Christmas decorations, and Sansa could only guess that she had tripped on a pair of candlesticks jutting out from between the openings in the banister. Her heart was racing, and all over a pair of fallen candlesticks.

 

Sansa hurried the rest of the way up to her bedroom door, flicking on the light switch in the hallway to help her see. It glowed to a dull orange before it sizzled and burst, and the loud _pop_ above her head scared her even worse. Her nerves recoiled instinctively beneath her skin, and she darted into her room. Sansa shut the door behind herself, laying her palm against the door as she released a shaky breath. There was no reason why a blown bulb should scare her so much. Sansa closed her eyes for a brief moment before she pulled away from the door.

 

Inside of her room, it was pitch black. She feared turning on another light switch, even though it was a silly fear, and instead she hurried over to a window to pull back the curtains.

 

The sky was alight with dimly glowing streetlights, setting off an orange blaze in the fog. Sansa looked down at their yard, which was cast in an eerie green haze from the Christmas porch bulb. The two colors swirled together in an unsettling display amongst the fog, which had begun to look like smoke to Sansa’s eyes. A burning sensation stung the back of her sight, and Sansa looked away from the glow outside of her window. It reminded her of a dream she had once. _It was just a dream_ , Sansa thought. _It wasn’t real_.

 

She backed away from the window, her hand falling from the curtain to return to her side. Sansa walked backwards in the darkness until she found her bed with the back of her knees, and she placed her palms and fingers down slowly against the mattress as she sat on it. _If I go to sleep_ , she thought, _will everything be different when I wake up? Will everything bad just go away, and the world go back to normal?_ Sansa wanted nothing more than for the world to be the way it was before. She didn’t want it to stay this way. Suddenly, the memory of a puppy she once had as a little girl came back to her. Lady used to comfort her when she was upset, and Sansa wished for nothing more than that Lady was here with her now. Sansa missed her so much. “Lady,” she whimpered softly, the name escaping her lips in a single breath.

 

Then, something stirred behind her in the darkness, and a hand reached out and grabbed her wrist.

 

The terror was instant, a spike of fear jolting through her chest. Sansa opened her mouth to scream against the intruder, but a second hand clamped down over her mouth and smothered her cry. She pulled against the strong arm around her, but then a familiar voice spoke into her ear, and it stilled her movements. “I knew you’d come,” he murmured, his voice a drunken slur against her ear. It sent an unwanted tingle down her spine.

 

She knew his voice anywhere. Sansa didn’t need the peculiar glow outside of her window to illuminate his face; she knew it by heart, every line and imperfection, every scar and indention. He was right behind her, his chest pressed hard against her back. Sansa wouldn’t see his face, anyway. His breath, so close to her face, smelled like sour liquor. She made a face against it. It was horrible. _How much has he had to drink?_ she asked herself, afraid of the answer.

 

His hand released her mouth, falling to her shoulder, where it lingered for only a moment before it left her completely. He had pulled away from her. Sansa sat as still as possible, her palms tense against the mattress, her heart pounding inside of her chest. Her breathing was ragged. Slowly, Sansa turned her head to look at him.

 

Sandor leaned back against her headboard. Sansa glanced over at her end table. An almost empty bottle of liquor sat there. Sandor reached for it, taking another long pull from it until it was empty. He closed his eyes, savoring the taste. “Don’t you want to know who’s winning?” he asked her, opening those bleary eyes and looking straight at her with a piercing gaze.

 

“What?” Sansa said, realizing she was scared of him. She had never been scared of him like this before. “Who?” she corrected herself, though her voice trembled. Sansa had no idea what he was talking about, but maybe she should amuse him for now.

 

Sandor laughed, but it was full of ache. It was a laugh of defeat. “Well, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’ve lost.”

 

 _He’s drunker than I’ve ever seen him before_ , Sansa thought _._ _He must have broken into our house. Why isn’t he home? Why is he here?_ “What have you lost?” she asked out loud, wanting to make sense of everything.

 

“All.”

 

It was just one word, but in that one word was all of the pain inside of him that he had never shared with her before. Sansa didn’t understand how he could lose it all. Sandor had plenty of things in his life. He had his own pub. He had friends that cared for him. _And he has me_ , Sansa thought. _Is that not enough?_ Loras’s death was hard on all of them, but Sandor was acting like he was the only one affected by it. It wasn’t fair to the rest of them.

 

Sansa meant to tell him of how she had gone to his apartment to find him before she had returned home, but the words wouldn’t come. She recognized the anger she felt at him coming to her home like this. He was drunk, and he had probably broken the law just to get into her house. He could have _knocked_. He could have come to her sober instead of drunk. Sandor could have handled this better than showing up in her room without a warning and scaring her half to death just to talk to her.

 

“Why did you come here?” she found herself asking him instead, and in her tone there was a hint of defiance. Sansa was mad at him, and he was damn well going to know it.

 

Sandor tossed the empty liquor bottle aside. It bounced on the bed, falling to the floor with a clunk. He rose slowly from the headboard. His shadow fell over her, darkening the room. Sansa felt her heart pounding harder. His hand reached out for her, the tips of his fingers grazing over her shoulder. They caught on her hair, pulling it gently out of the way. A shiver passed through her shoulders and neck, but she tried to hold it in.

 

Sansa closed her eyes, sitting as still as a statue, as Sandor drew closer to her. He wrapped his fingers around her arm, holding her with an iron grip. He held her arm too tightly, and it hurt. He leaned into her, though. He leaned his forehead against her temple, and his nose barely grazed against her cheek. His breath was hot against her skin. It washed over her face when he spoke. “You promised me a song, little bird,” Sandor murmured, “or have you forgotten?”

 

Her eyes shot open. She had no idea what he was talking about. He hadn’t called her little bird since . . . _Since I sang for him_ , Sansa thought, _that night out on the pier_. It was ages ago. When they first met, Sandor had joked about calling her that, but he had never actually called her that. Sansa tried to tug away from his grip, but he wouldn’t let her go. “Stop it,” she said. “You’re scaring me—”

 

He wrenched her closer as she tried to wiggle away, and she tilted her head back, finding herself looking up at him in the eerie haze of her room. “I tried to keep you safe,” he rasped, his voice rougher than usual. “They used to be afraid of me, but now . . . ” His voice trailed off for a moment. “I’d kill them all if it meant you would never be hurt again.”

 

Sansa didn’t understand what he meant. She didn’t understand any of it. He yanked her closer, and his hand was touching her face. The fingers on her cheek were gentle in comparison to his grip on her arm. Sansa shuddered at the contact of his hand. Sandor leaned down to her as if he meant to kiss her, but she turned away from him, closing her eyes. She didn’t want him kissing her when he was drunk like this. She didn’t want him thinking he could do whatever he liked just because he was drunk and she was his girlfriend. It didn’t work that way.

 

Sandor stilled above her. She could feel it as he began to shake. It started in his shoulders, spreading to his arms and down to his hands and fingers. “Can’t bear to look at me now, can you?” she heard him say, and in that moment his voice had never sounded so bitter as it did right then. He gave her arm a hard wrench, and he pulled her around him before he shoved her down upon her back against the mattress.

 

He had a knife. Sansa didn’t see where it had come from, but it was in his hand. Suddenly, the blade pushed against her throat, cold and biting and hard. _Right in the jugular_ , whispered a little voice somewhere in the back of her head. Sansa swallowed against the press of cold steel upon her neck, her eyes going wide as she realized she had dreamt of this moment. When Margaery had first told her of Sandor’s past, of the man he had killed, Sansa had gone to sleep and _dreamt_ of this moment. She had already seen it happen once before, only with castles and smoke and the stench of blood, and her eyes filled to the brim with tears that spilled over at the corners.

 

 _Please don’t kill me_ , she wanted to plead, _please don’t_. Even as the tears blurred her vision, Sansa could see him above her, a hulking shadow painted in orange and green. Sandor had never given her a reason to doubt him before. He had never hurt her before. He had never filled her with terror like he did now. Sansa was crippled with fear. Her throat felt tight and dry, and every sweet moment they had shared together fled from her mind. Sandor twisted the point, pushing the knife into her throat, and she nearly closed her eyes again, but they went wider instead as she stared up at the blurry ceiling beyond his head.

 

 _Sing, little bird_ , Sansa recalled him saying in her dream, but he didn’t say it now. _Sing for your little life_.

 

Sansa realized then she was sobbing. She was sobbing hard, her chest shaking as tears streamed from her eyes. “Please don’t kill me,” she pleaded, choking on the words. “Please don’t, Sandor, please. Please don’t—” The steel of the knife was cold and hard, its bite too real. One more inch, and her blood would be all over the bed, soaking into the sheets.

 

Aside from the noise of her sobbing, all was silent. The knife pulled away from her throat, and she breathed in deep, taking in the air gratefully. He still held the knife. Some instinct she could not explain caused her to lift her hand, and Sansa reached out for his. She laid it on top of his fingers, feeling his hand shake beneath hers. Her other hand rose from the bed to his face to cup his cheek. As hesitant as she was to do it, she touched his face. His cheek was wet, and it was not from rain.

 

“Sansa,” he said once more, and his voice was rough and raw, filled with pain.

 

He pulled away from her, rising from the bed. Sansa was too afraid to move. She saw him stumble in the darkness. The knife glinted in the light from the window, and then she heard something clatter to the floor. Sansa refused to move, even as she heard him open the bedroom door. He disappeared beyond it, his footsteps retreating down the staircase. In the distance she heard the front door open and close, and only then did she finally breathe in deeply again.

 

She lay there for a long time. When she managed to push herself up from the bed moments later, the world felt different. It felt colder. She couldn’t make sense of tonight, and as much as she wanted to know the reasons for it, she couldn’t bring herself to think of even asking him. Sansa crawled out of the bed, and she found his jacket hanging on one of the posts at the foot of her bed when she placed her hand on top of it for support.

 

Looking down at his jacket, Sansa balled the material in her fist. She pulled it free from the post and brought it close to her chest, dipping her head down to breathe in its familiar scent that smelled of his aftershave. It also smelled of alcohol, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Sansa wrapped the jacket around her shoulders and huddled beneath it on the floor, clutching it tightly in her grasp. A pang shot through her neck, and Sansa let go of the jacket with one hand to raise it to her throat. She touched the spot where the knife had been pressed into her skin.

 

It came away clean with no blood when she looked at her fingers under the moonlight.

 

Sansa rubbed her clean fingers together and lowered her chin again, huddling beneath his jacket as if it was the only thing to keep her warm. Everything was so cold, and she remained there under his jacket until her family returned home. No one came to her room for the longest time until she heard her mother call up the staircase.

 

“Supper is ready!” Catelyn’s voice echoed through the house.

 

Sansa heard Bran and Rickon running like mad down the stairs to follow the call of their mother’s voice, and then another sound of rushing feet met Sansa’s ears. She didn’t want to move, though, until a hand darted into her room and flicked on the light switch. Sansa looked up. Arya stood there at her doorway, looking at Sansa funny.

 

“What are you doing on the floor?” Arya asked her, and then her eyes shot away from Sansa and noticed something on the floor. Quickly, Arya moved to shut the door behind herself. She hurried across the floor, picking up the knife and lifting it up to stare at it. “Sansa, what’s this?”

 

When Sansa didn’t speak and remained huddled on the ground, Arya inspected her room further and found the empty bottle of liquor as well. She sniffed at the nozzle, making a disgusted face at the smell. Arya came back to Sansa, sitting down on the floor in front of her. Arya placed the knife and liquor bottle on the carpet. She lifted her eyes to Sansa’s face, trying to read her sister’s expression.

 

“Sansa,” Arya asked again, “what happened?”

 

Sansa felt a familiar tremble return to her lower lip, but there were no more tears to shed for him. Her eyes were sore and dry.

 

“Sandor is gone,” she managed to say quietly, and she hugged his jacket closer to herself as the realization set in. _He’s gone_ , she thought.

 

Arya’s serious expression fell into a look of sad recognition. After a moment, she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Sansa, hugging her sister close.

 

Sansa raised her arms to return the hug, burying her face into Arya’s shoulder.

 

Supper was cold by the time they ate, but Sansa refused to leave her room. Arya brought two plates up with her, one for herself and one for Sansa, and then she went back down to fetch them something to drink. When Ned asked if anything was wrong, Sansa overhead Arya tell him that she wanted some time alone. Ned didn’t ask any further questions, and Arya returned to Sansa’s room. They ate silently together, sitting on the floor across from each other.

 

Normally, Arya asked a lot of questions, but not tonight. The food was flavorless, and Sansa didn’t eat much of it. She had never thought he would . . .

 

Her hand lifted up to touch her throat again. The pang was gone. It didn’t hurt her anymore, but the shock was still there.

 

When they were done, Arya took their cups and plates downstairs. She returned once more and found Sansa still huddled on the floor with the jacket.

 

“At least lie down on the bed,” Arya told her, sounding a little petulant.

 

Sansa looked up at her sister. She didn’t want to lie down in her own bed tonight after what had happened on it earlier.

 

“Can I lie down in your bed tonight?” Sansa asked quietly. “With you?”

 

Arya’s look turned sympathetic once more, and she tilted her head to the side as a frown creased her features. “On one condition,” Arya said, and she paused for a moment to let it sink in. “Only if you promise to tell me later what happened between you and Sandor.”

 

Sansa closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she said, “Okay, I will.”

 

Arya extended her hand to Sansa, and Sansa took it. Arya helped her to her feet, and the two of them retreated to Arya’s room for the evening. When Sansa went to lie down on Arya’s bed later, she had wrapped herself up in Sandor’s jacket despite Arya’s protests at how it smelled and she didn’t want it in her bed. Sansa ignored her sister, though. She wanted to keep his jacket with her. It was the only thing she had left of him right now, and as confused as the thoughts were in her head, she couldn’t just change her feelings for him overnight.

 

Sansa buried the side of her face against the pillow. She was huddled in warmth beneath the covers with her sister beside her and her arms in Sandor’s jacket as it helped to keep her warm. With Arya’s room facing the back of their house, the windows showed none of the eerie lights from the streets beyond it, only the soft grey glow of the moon through the clouds.

 

 


	103. There’s a Beast, and I Let It Run

_* * *_

 

Jaime crossed his arms over his chest, glaring across the desk at Agent Daenerys Targaryen. She had a cold and detached look to her face, though she glared right back at him. Dany’s features were nearly washed out with the combination of her pale coloring and her silvery-blonde hair, which looked messy as it hung about her shoulders in tiny, frizzy curls. She was hardly wearing the usual amount of makeup he was used to seeing on her face, instead opting for a more natural look in her grey pantsuit. Beneath her jacket, she wore a pinstriped burgundy blouse. She looked disheveled and tired as if she had been up all night with a stack of paperwork and a string of late night phone calls.

 

Dany looked how Jaime felt inside. Even though he was a bit more put together than her today, he was still a mess beneath the surface. Jaime rarely shared it or showed it to anyone, not even Brienne, choosing instead to bottle it up. His life was in shambles, though, and no one seemed to acknowledge it or ask him how he was doing. They all scowled at him as usual, giving him funny looks instead. He was the backstabber, the shame to the department, and everywhere he went, people knew it. He had an estranged sister, a brother who wasn’t answering his phone calls, a newly murdered father, no job, a ruined reputation that prevented him from finding a new one, and now they had called him back to the station for further questioning over his recently deceased father. Jaime was barely holding it together. He felt like an old doll that had been played with too many times, and now his seams were coming undone, unraveling all over the floor. Those seams were his sanity, and he was losing it, thread by thread.

 

He was, simply put, headed towards the path of depression if he wasn’t already there now. Jaime knew it. He recognized it. Brienne probably knew it, too, and none of this bullshit was helping him.

 

“Are you going to answer the question, Lannister?” Dany inquired, placing her hands on the back of the empty chair she stood behind. Jaime glanced down. Her fingers drummed impatiently against the metal she clutched with her hands. She was just as unraveled as him, if not more. Somehow, the thought was pleasing to Jaime.

 

He lifted his head, smiling openly at her. Jaime made a dithering expression as he shrugged his shoulders and tilted his head to the side, raising his eyebrows. “I don’t see why I have to answer that question,” he said.

 

“You don’t have to answer that question, Jaime,” Petyr told him from his side.

 

Jaime pointed his finger at Petyr. “He says I don’t have to answer that question,” Jaime repeated.

 

From the corner of the room, Agent Jorah’s mouth tightened into a thin line. Jorah readjusted his folded arms against his chest, turning his head to look away from Jaime and Petyr. There was a peculiar satisfaction in making them squirm, but Jaime knew this game could only go on for so long before somebody broke.

 

Agent Daenerys pushed herself away from the chair, walking over to the door of the interrogation room and opening it quickly in her fury. She stormed out of the room, letting the door slowly fall to a close behind her. Jaime raised his eyebrows and looked over at Agent Jorah as the door closed with a heavy _thud_ behind her.

 

“Is she coming back, or can I leave?” Jaime asked him.

 

Agent Jorah glared at Jaime. “You can stay right there,” he replied slowly.

 

Jaime waited as patiently as possible for Agent Dany to return. When she came back, she had a thick manila folder in her hands. She slapped it down onto the table, causing Jaime to jolt slightly in his seat. His heart shot into his throat at the sight of another manila folder being slapped down in front of him. The last time he saw one of those, he had been blackmailed into giving up information to put his father behind bars.

 

Jaime raised his eyes to Agent Dany. “What’s this?” he asked with care.

 

“This is what your father had been up to,” Daenerys informed him, pressing the tips of her fingers down on top of the manila folder and pushing it towards him, “until his untimely death on the night of New Year’s Eve.” She moved her hand, opening the folder, revealing a document with small printed words on top of a larger stack of documents. Various areas of the sheet had been blacked out to conceal information on it. Daenerys picked it up, holding it out to Jaime. He took the document from her hands and began to read over it, his eyes slowly scanning the page. “Not only had he been involved with various criminal activities within the city of Kingsland,” Dany continued, “but he and his brothers had been involved with numerous terrorist groups overseas, such as the Golden Company, the Second Sons, and another group known as the Windblown. These groups are often known for disposing rulers to put others in their place, others of more compliant and controllable natures. Tywin Lannister was heavily involved with people who abused and trampled on basic human rights and caused full-scale slaughters to achieve their ends. We have been after Tywin for _years_ , but he always seemed to slip through our fingers. We could never find anything to pin on him that would stick until recently, and then your case came to the forefront.”

 

Jaime stared at the document, seeing it and yet not seeing it. He knew his father had unscrupulous business dealings with unsavory people, but even he hadn’t known that his father had gone this far off the deep end. Tywin had reached his long arm across the Narrow Sea, to another continent altogether, bending people in different parts of the world to his will. Jaime couldn’t imagine the purpose for this. He couldn’t fathom what his father had been trying to do. Had his father had some sort of twisted dream to become a tyrant, a despot? A dictator? Tywin had been aiming for the seat of Prime Minister, Jaime recalled, before everything had been blown out of the water. How far would his arm have reached, then, had he gotten it?

 

 _Father_ , Jaime thought with disbelief, _what have you been up to?_

 

“And you’re telling me you knew _nothing_ of this?” Daenerys demanded of him, slapping her hand down onto the stack of papers in the open folder on the table. The sudden and loud motion caused Jaime’s eyes to shoot up to hers. He blinked at her, hardly seeing her face past his shock.

 

“No,” Jaime said quietly, gently placing the paper back onto the stack as Daenerys pulled her hand back. “No, I didn’t know about this.”

 

“Your sister,” Dany said. “Does she know about this?”

 

Jaime felt his irritation returning to him. They had made him sell out his father, but Jaime would be damned if he sold out his sister, too. Jaime crossed his arms again, leaning his head to the left as he narrowed his eyes at Daenerys. “I don’t know,” he said. “Does my _brother_ know about this?”

 

Daenerys’s eyes became like ice. “Your brother is not the one being questioned here,” she told him.

 

“No,” Jaime agreed, shaking his head, “but I haven’t seen him in weeks, nor have I heard from him. I’ve tried calling his phone, but there’s no answer. I’m starting to worry for his life.” Jaime looked over at Petyr, who sat beside him, to give his lawyer a look of concern. “Mr. Baelish, is there something I can do about this? I mean, I’m genuinely worried about my brother’s life here. Can I file a missing person’s report? As far as I know, Agent Daenerys Targaryen is the last person to have seen him alive—”

 

“ _Enough!_ ” Dany commanded, and Jaime felt his heart skip a beat, but he didn’t show it outside. He thought her voice could move armies, but she wasn’t going to have any luck moving him.

 

“No, this _isn’t_ enough,” Jaime shot back at her, leaning forward in his chair as he pushed down a single finger against the cold surface of the metal table. “If you want to talk to me, then _I_ want to talk to my brother.”

 

Dany stared at Jaime, her mouth parted slightly, her face drawn tight. She took a deep breath and exhaled it, turning away from Jaime and Petyr and walking over to Agent Jorah in the corner of the room. They stood very close to one another, talking low below their breaths. It was a quiet exchange that, no matter how hard Jaime strained his ears, he couldn’t make out what Dany and Jorah were saying to one another. Eventually, Agent Daenerys pulled away from Agent Jorah, and then she left the room again. This time she didn’t storm out, though.

 

The silence afterwards was uncomfortable, and Jaime folded his arms over his chest again. “Was that a good sign?” he asked Petyr in a low voice.

 

Petyr leaned a few inches towards him from the side. “It could be,” he said. “I’m not sure, though. We’ll have to wait and see.” He leaned back into his seat again. “Although, unless she has him hidden around here somewhere, I imagine we’re in for a bit of a wait.”

 

They were in for a bit of a wait. Daenerys came back to retrieve Agent Jorah from the room, and Jaime watched as the tall blonde man followed her out of the room and the door shut behind them. Thirty minutes passed with nothing happening, and Jaime got impatient. He began to tap his foot against the floor and drum his fingers upon the table until Petyr rose suddenly from his chair. The metal chair screeched against the tiled floor, drawing Jaime’s attention quickly.

 

Jaime looked up at him. “Where are you going?”

 

“I’ll be right back,” Petyr told him assuredly, smoothing out his suit after he had stood up. He headed for the door to the interrogation room, but then he stopped once he had reached it, his hand resting on the handle. Petyr turned back around to look at Jaime. “Don’t say _anything_ while I’m gone,” Petyr advised Jaime in a slow voice. “Understood?”

 

Jaime nodded his head, but he didn’t say anything. He knew better than to do something like that.

 

Petyr left the room, and Jaime was alone.

 

Another thirty minutes passed before the door opened again, and Jaime thought it was Petyr finally coming back, but he didn’t see anyone at first. Instinctively, Jaime lowered his eyes, catching sight of a familiar messy mop of dark blond hair in the doorway. Jaime shot up out of his seat, seeing his brother, Tyrion, standing there at the door with a wilted grasp on the handle.

 

Tyrion froze at Jaime’s sudden choice to stand up at his appearance, wearing the most hesitant look that Jaime had ever seen on his brother’s face.

 

“Hello, brother,” Tyrion said, his voice equally hesitant.

 

Jaime slowly came around the table, his fingers trailing against the cold metal. He had feared something might have actually happened to Tyrion, so to see him here alive and well and perfectly fine was more than words could convey. Jaime crossed the distance between them, and he knelt down on a single knee in front of Tyrion without saying a word. He quickly wrapped his arms around his little brother, pulling Tyrion into his embrace, though he failed to notice the way in which Tyrion just barely pulled away from him as if out of fear. He clapped Tyrion on the back, squeezing him close. Jaime closed his eyes, glad to see the one member of his family who had, so far, yet to betray him.

 

Tyrion cleared his throat. “ _Ahem_ ,” he said. “I’ve missed you, too, Jaime . . . but you’re choking me.”

 

Jaime let go of Tyrion, pulling back suddenly. “Oh, sorry,” Jaime said a little fast, and he rubbed his hands up and down once on Tyrion’s arms in an affectionate gesture. Jaime grinned at his brother. “I’ve missed you. Where the _hell_ have you been?”

 

“Under the radar,” Tyrion told him, raising his eyebrows. “They thought it best, what with me . . . ” His voice trailed off, and Tyrion closed his mouth, rolling his lips inward with a tight pinch to hold them in place. He dropped his gaze from Jaime’s eyes as if he couldn’t meet them.

 

Jaime settled his hands just beneath Tyrion’s shoulders and gripped tight. “What have you been doing?”

 

“It’s a long story,” Tyrion said.

 

“I’ve got plenty of time,” Jaime told him.

 

They remained in silence for a little while, Tyrion standing and Jaime crouching, until Tyrion pulled away from Jaime’s grasp. Jaime turned to watch his brother as he walked over to one of the chairs at the table. Tyrion pulled one of them out, taking a seat, and Jaime finally stood up. He followed his brother to the table and returned to his seat. They met each other’s gaze across the table.

 

Tyrion bit his lips together again as a troubled expression crossed his face. They sat there without exchanging any words until Tyrion grew comfortable enough to speak to him. Jaime didn’t want to push it out of him. Tyrion would tell him on his own time, but Jaime had a feeling he knew what was coming, anyway.

 

“Father,” Tyrion began slowly, “asked me to do something very illegal and very traceable. It would have left an electronic fingerprint, a mark that would have led straight to me. I refused on the grounds that I wasn’t willing to risk so much in case the authorities took notice of such large sums of money and tracked them. It would have led them to me, not him. Well, we got into multiple arguments over it until he finally threatened me.” Tyrion changed the tone of his voice to mock the sound of their father’s stern tone. “After all, I was his _son_ , he said, and his _son_ wasn’t supposed to _refuse_ him.” Tyrion sighed, casting his gaze aside as his chest deflated with the motion. “I sought out the proper people to talk to in order to do something about it. I had _had_ it with his lies and his manipulations and his . . . well, you know our father,” Tyrion finished.

 

“Yes,” Jaime said quietly, “I know our father.”

 

Tyrion raised his eyes. “He did the same with you,” Tyrion said, “and I saw what it did to you.”

 

Jaime felt emotion cause his jaw to grow tight. “You didn’t want to end up in my shoes.”

 

Tyrion forced a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes, though they wrinkled at the corners. “Can you blame me, brother?”

 

Jaime shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “I can’t.”

 

Tyrion let out another sigh, deeper this time. “They got me in touch with Agent Daenerys Targaryen. Apparently, they had been onto our father for _years_ without getting anything substantial, so me coming forward was a goldmine for them. Daenerys had been working a case against him for some time. He was into things much deeper than even I knew, but then again, Father never shared everything with me, anyway. I don’t think he ever trusted me completely. They assigned the case to her, and she came over to Kingsland. She posed as my wife because it was the easiest way to get her close to Father. Everyone would believe _I’d_ spend my fortune on a mail-order bride from some exotic country because who would ever marry an ugly dwarf like me?” Tyrion smiled bitterly, his eyes wrinkling at the corners again. The forced smile faded from his face, and Tyrion glanced down at the shadow reflections on the table in front of them both. “Daenerys acquired a good deal of information through me and our visits to Father, but never all of the information she wanted or needed. There were some things we couldn’t do. The evidence couldn’t be acquired illegally, or it would be inadmissible in court—”

 

“Understandable,” Jaime replied, finding himself taking all of this in easier than he expected to, “but why did you disappear?”

 

Tyrion met Jaime’s gaze again. “I didn’t,” he said flatly. “Not really, anyway. I’d been busy these last few weeks, but when news of Father’s death reached them, they wanted to put me into,” Tyrion lifted his hands, making finger quotes in the air, “‘protective custody’ for my safety. Their agents swooped in and scooped me up, and I haven’t had proper reception on my cell phone since.” Tyrion made a forlorn face. “I couldn’t even watch porn. It was devastating.”

 

Jaime knew his brother was just trying to crack a joke to lighten the tension, but it bothered Jaime. Tyrion didn’t even seem affected by their father’s death, and it was worse that he hadn’t been there for the funeral. Many people had turned out for it, despite the revelations and accusations, but Tywin’s own son, Tyrion, had been inexplicably missing from the service. Whispers had spread and so had a few rumors to explain his absence, and Jaime had called his brother’s cell phone over and over and over, never receiving an answer, just a voicemail box that was full and couldn’t accept any more messages.

 

“You weren’t there for the service,” Jaime told him. “People talked.”

 

Tyrion turned his head as he made a derisive huff, waving his hand dismissively. “People always talk,” he scoffed. “It’s the story of my life. They wouldn’t let me leave, and I wasn’t particularly sad at his passing either.”

 

“He was your _father_ —”

 

Tyrion sat up straighter in his chair, his eyes alight with scarcely contained rage as his nostrils flared outward. He balled up his fist, placing it upon the table. His knuckles were white from his tight clutch, nails digging deep into his palm. “He was a selfish, _arrogant_ , greedy, and abusive _megalomaniac_ ,” Tyrion pronounced fervently, and he brought his fist down all of a sudden, banging it against the table.

 

Jaime was at a loss for words. He sat there, his mouth hanging open. As much as he had hated their father for various things, he had never truly _hated_ their father, not like Tyrion did. It stunned him to hear this from his brother’s own lips. Jaime didn’t know what to make of it or how to process it. He leaned back in his chair, stunned into silence. There was nothing in the room, save for the sound of their breathing.

 

Tyrion sat back in his seat as well, his hand sliding off of the table. “There,” he said bitterly, “you have my story. Are you happy now?”

 

Jaime was silent. He stared at the table. He couldn’t even bring himself to look at his brother anymore. Not yet, anyway. It was too soon. Thankfully, he was saved from further awkwardness with Tyrion. The door opened up, and Jaime glanced up to see Agent Daenerys Targaryen returning with Agent Jorah Mormont on her heels. Agent Jorah went to close the door, but Tyrion rose abruptly from his chair.

 

“I am done here,” Tyrion announced firmly, heading for the exit.

 

Jaime didn’t try to stop him.

 

When the door closed behind Tyrion, Agent Jorah looked up at Jaime with raised eyebrows. “Family troubles?” he asked, a hint of amusement in his tone.

 

“Where’s my lawyer?” Jaime asked, crossing his arms again. “I’m not talking to you without him present.”

 

“He’s getting a cup of water,” Agent Dany told him, moving to sit down across from Jaime in the seat that Tyrion had occupied just moments before. “So, do you have anything new to tell us?”

 

Jaime fixed his gaze on a smudge upon the dull surface of the metal table. “No,” he said simply, “I still don’t know anything about my father’s overseas business activities. He never included me in any of that.” Jaime slouched in the chair. “For the record, I never wanted to be a part of it. Everything I did for him, they have my written testimony on it. The deal never said anything about becoming void if my father was shot to death before the trial, so as far as I see it, I’m golden.” He lifted his eyes to Dany. “And I’m ready to go home.”

 

The door opened a second time, and it was Petyr. He crossed the room to Jaime’s side, sitting down beside him and placing a small cup of water on the table. “You haven’t said anything in my absence, have you?” he asked hurriedly, speaking loud enough for Dany and Jorah to hear him. It wasn’t as if it he could hide it in this small room with Dany sitting so close to them.

 

“No,” Jaime said, never breaking eye contact with Dany, “nothing that matters.”

 

“Good,” Petyr said, scooting his chair closer to the table. “Good, good. Now, do we have anything else to cover,” he added, aiming his question at Dany, “or has my client answered all of your questions to your utmost satisfaction?”

 

Agent Dany did not remove her unnaturally sharp violet eyes from Jaime’s gaze either. Neither of them was willing to be the first to relent.

 

“Your father was running a business,” Agent Daenerys said in a firm voice, “and he expected that business to pass into the hands of someone else. If his successor wasn’t Tyrion, and his successor wasn’t you, then that leaves your sister.” Dany’s pointed gaze bore through Jaime’s skull. Her eyes appeared darker suddenly, and they were empty and cold like the cooled ash in a dead fireplace. “Cersei,” she finished softly, the name falling from her lips like a quiet hiss.

 

Jaime’s jaw clenched tight again. He pushed himself up from his seat, his palms flat on the table. “My sister,” Jaime countered, “can barely manage her _checkbook_ without going broke. I’d love to see her inherit my father’s business and burn it to the _ground_.”

 

With that, Jaime stormed out of the interrogation room, voices calling out behind him, but he ignored them all as he stalked through the station towards the exit.

 

When he reached the doors, he shoved one of them open and headed out into the cold beyond the warmth of the department’s walls. Being here wasn’t the same anymore. People had still stared at him on his way out, and it would never be his home away from home again. Somewhere inside of him, Jaime knew he had to let it go. He had to make something new out of his life, but he didn’t know how to do it or where to begin. He was always going to be Tywin Lannister’s son, the disgraced backstabber of his own father.

 

Jaime inhaled sharply, holding out his arm and waving down a cab as his breath fogged out in front of him. Brienne was still out on medical leave, resting at the house and most likely entertaining herself with a new hobby to occupy her time. As a cab pulled up to the curb, Jaime hopped into the backseat. Once inside, he realized his hands were already freezing, so he blew hot air on them and rubbed them vigorously together.

 

“Where to?” the cab driver asked him, and Jaime opened his mouth to announce the road to his house, but something held him back.

 

“King’s Gate,” he said instead, naming the residential gated community where Robert Baratheon and his sister, Cersei Lannister, lived with their three children.

 

 _My three children_ , Jaime thought, even though the concept felt alien to him. They were his children, but they _weren’t_ his children. They had been raised as Robert’s kids, even though he and Cersei both knew the truth. It was a part of his past that Jaime was not proud of, not that he had ever had a moment where he had been proud of it. It had been a toxic relationship, unpredictable and violent and self-destructive, and it had begun when they were just kids, too young to know the difference. Even when they became old enough to know better, they still had never stopped until it was too late.

 

Jaime looked down at his hands, red and raw and shaking, as the cab pulled off from the curb.

 

He had loved Cersei once as more than a sister, but now he loved her less. Jaime still cared about her, and so that was why he was going to her now. Some part of him still wanted to try and protect her from what was coming. There was no way their father meant to pass the keys of his kingdom to Cersei, and yet there were doubts in Jaime’s mind about that. Tywin would have never given it to Tyrion. As much as he had been shocked by Tyrion’s revelations concerning their father, Jaime had never doubted his father’s treatment of his little brother. Their mother, Joanna, had died giving birth to Tyrion. She had gone into labor far away from any medical help, and by the time help had arrived, it had been too late. Joanna had bled out, and their father had carried a stone in his heart against Tyrion for it ever since.

 

Tywin had always wanted it to be Jaime, and Jaime had always refused him.

 

He glanced outside of the cab’s backseat window as the streets passed by. Jaime rubbed his hands together and breathed hot breath onto them again.

 

He hoped Cersei was home when he got there.

 

 


	104. We Hit a Wall

_* * *_

 

Sandor stared down the street at Sansa’s house as the evening sun lowered to the horizon and the shadows made their descent across the landscape. Yellow beams struck the sides of the houses, casting some of them in glow and the crevices into shadow. With the light stinging his eyes, he finally looked away as he cranked the vehicle and pulled away from the curb. Sandor knew he shouldn’t have been here, watching her house like this, but he saw her sometimes. Occasionally, she was out in the yard, chasing after her younger siblings or walking alongside her sister, Arya. He knew better than to be here, but there were no other chances to see her, and he took all the chances he could get when they were available.

 

As he drove through the streets of Kingsland, following the same path as every other day before, Sandor felt the same mindless emptiness that filled everyday so far since that night. It had only been one week since that night, but February had broken upon them within that week. The weather had gotten colder for a spell during the last few weeks, and then it had subsided again. Sandor found himself entering the main highway once he had gotten past the residential roads, and he tried to focus on driving, but his mind was far away from the present. The world before him was just a blur, passing by.

 

He had gotten himself drunk that night. It was the only way he could have done what he had known he needed to do. He had done it for her, too. He had done it to protect Sansa’s life, to save her from further harm because of her involvement with him. As paradoxical as it had seemed at the time, Sandor had held a knife to her throat to save her, but Sansa would never understand it and he would never get the chance to explain it to her. He couldn’t have done it sober. Sandor didn’t have it in him to put her through that with a clear mind, his thoughts unclouded by alcohol. Even though it was for her own good, he still had to drown himself in liquor until he was mad enough to do it. The liquor had loosened his inhibitions that night, but it hadn’t removed them entirely. They had still been there in the back of Sandor’s mind, lingering in dark recesses, clinging onto him, and pulling him back.

 

Sandor hadn’t believed he could muster up the nerve to go through with it, and yet somehow he had. Even with the encouragement of the alcohol, it had taken everything in him to force himself through the rigid actions, through the lines he had recited a million times inside of his head. Sansa had to believe exactly three things from his performance. She had to believe that he was dangerous, violent, and mad, and most importantly of all, that he would use all of those three things against her. He had known talking to her about the threats alone wouldn’t have been enough. Sansa would have been willful and adamant about how they could have fought against any trials as long as they were together. It was a foolish idea, of course, and something Sansa would have said. Sandor also hadn’t wanted to pull her into that world, though, and arming her with knowledge about Cersei would have done just that. Sansa deserved a better life than that. She deserved to be happy, free, and safe.

 

Things he couldn’t deliver for her.

 

His hand tightened on the steering wheel as he remembered how the tears had fallen from the corners of Sansa’s eyes, her choked sobs as they had fled from her throat, her whispered pleas filling the darkness . . .

 

 _Please don’t kill me. Please don’t, Sandor, please. Please don’t_ —

 

A deep horn, blaring through the air, hurled Sandor back into the present, and he gripped the steering wheel hard with both hands as he swerved out of the way of another car coming at him. Lights flashed before his vision as he regained control of his vehicle. The roads weren’t iced over today, and for that, he was lucky. His nerves were shot, though, and his heart was thumping hard inside of his ribcage. Another car honked its horn at him, and Sandor slammed his palm down against the steering wheel, sounding the horn in his own car back at it.

 

He was going to kill himself on his way to work if he wasn’t paying attention to where he was going. Letting his mind drift off was dangerous enough on its own merit. He didn’t need to be doing it while he was driving. Sandor kept his focus on the present for the rest of the drive, forcing his thoughts away and making his mind an empty shell.

 

When he arrived at work, he relieved Steffon of his duties and took over the bar. Asha worked the tables with Allard, and neither of them said a thing to Sandor. Ever since he had gotten back to work, they had all noticed things were different with him. Allard didn’t poke around where his nose didn’t belong, but Steffon looked on with concern at Sandor. Asha acted as if nothing was wrong, but she took a sterner stance whenever she was around Sandor. If he ever messed up or forgot something, Asha stepped in and worked her magic to clean it up. It was an unspoken natural instinct for her. She slipped into a role of leadership, and he let her do it. Asha never commented on it. She never asked him questions. Not yet, anyway, but she was bound to. Asha was curious unlike the other two, and it showed in her face.

 

It was three hours into his shift, and Sandor was wiping down a glass with a rag when the front door opened up, the golden bell rang, and another person walked into his pub. The place was already crowded from wall to wall tonight of people looking to drown themselves in the name of self-pity or blind celebration, much like it was on any other night, but the atmosphere was busier than usual. Sandor didn’t ask what brought in the crowds on a night like this, but as of lately, there was little he cared about, anyway. The television was playing in the background with a game, a large crowd surrounding the set in a huddle and cheering on the players. The group jeered suddenly all in unison, and Sandor looked up from the glass in his hands.

 

The rag stilled on the inside of the glass, his hands freezing in place. It wasn’t just any person who had walked through that door into his pub. Sandor knew all of his usual patrons, and this man wasn’t one of them. Sandor hadn’t expected to see him again so soon. Most of the enmity was gone since the funeral, but it still tightened Sandor’s nerves to see the man here in his pub. Of all the pubs in the city, he chose this one.

 

Sandor removed his hand from the glass, putting it down on the countertop as he dropped the rag. He placed both hands against the ledge of the counter, and Renly took a seat across from him at the bar.

 

“Bourbon,” Renly ordered airily, making himself comfortable at the counter. He folded his arms and placed them on the countertop. “Best one you’ve got.”

 

“Bourbon,” Sandor repeated, as if he hadn’t heard it the first time.

 

“Yes,” Renly said in a calm voice. He stared across the counter at Sandor without blinking. “Bourbon.”

 

Sandor stared at him for a moment longer before he turned away and grabbed a bottle of bourbon from the shelf. He poured Renly two fingers worth in a glass, and Renly downed it immediately. Sandor watched in silence as Renly tapped the bottom of the glass onto the counter.

 

“Another one,” Renly said, only his voice sounded duller this time.

 

Sandor poured him another one, but Renly took his time with the second glass. He sipped at it like it was a rare delicacy, savoring the taste of it on his tongue. Sandor placed the bottle down onto the counter, pushing it away from himself.

 

“Why are you here?” Sandor finally asked him.

 

Renly paused for a moment, staring off into empty space. Eventually, he placed his glass against the countertop. He sat there, still and wordless, and then ran his finger slowly along the rim of the cup. His eyes were far away in another world. Without realizing it until just then, Sandor felt pity for him. Renly moved like the motions had no purpose. It was like he was only drifting by, being blown by the wind and chance instead of by choice. Without Loras, Renly looked older, more tired, and lost like the world and its ways had finally caught up with him. The man across from him was weary of life, Sandor recognized, and he had the look of a man counting down the days to his deathbed.

 

In his own kind of way, Sandor understood the feeling.

 

Renly looked down at his lap and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a token and placed it beside his glass on the countertop. Sandor he narrowed his eyes at Renly’s hand, the coin peeking out between the other man’s fingers. He thought Renly meant to use it as payment for his drinks instead of paying with standard money. When Renly removed his hand from the coin, it revealed a bright golden surface with a raised impression of a rose on it. There were two words circling around the inner edge beneath the rose.

 

Renly pushed the coin towards him, and Sandor leaned forward to read the two words embedded into the soft gold. _Growing strong_ , it read. It was dented as if it had seen a lot, but the malleable quality told Sandor it was likely real gold.

 

“Loras wanted you to have this,” Renly told him, breaking the silence.

 

Sandor lifted his eyes from the coin. “What’s this?”

 

Renly didn’t lift his eyes from the coin. “It was his good luck charm,” Renly said softly. “He carried it with him since he was a boy. It was from his grandmother, a gift. He didn’t have it with him that night. He left it with me, for safekeeping.”

 

Sandor glanced back down at the coin. Something that valuable and meaningful wasn’t something a person just gave away. Renly didn’t want it anymore.

 

“Loras didn’t want me to have it,” Sandor said. “You just don’t want to keep it.”

 

Renly reached out and grabbed his glass, downing the rest of it. He tapped it on the counter, rising from his seat. “It didn’t do him any good that night because it was with me.” Renly straightened out his coat, and then he stood still in front of the bar. His eyes were dull and blank. “Do you really think I want to keep it after that?”

 

“I’m not taking something—”

 

Renly reached into his pocket again, and he slapped a few loose bills down onto the counter. “For my drinks,” he said, turning away at last.

 

“I don’t owe you anything,” Sandor called out, causing Renly to pause. He didn’t know why he said it, only that it had been there in the back of his mind as Renly was about to leave his pub. He had sacrificed enough for Renly Baratheon, and they had both lost somebody important because of it.

 

Enough was enough.

 

Renly’s back was to him, but he tilted his head to the side as if in contemplation. “No,” Renly finally answered him without turning around, “you don’t owe me anything, Sandor. Our bond is cut.”

 

Sandor furrowed his brow. It was strange wording. He didn’t know what Renly meant by that until he thought harder.

 

 _Loras was the bond_ , Sandor thought, _and Loras is dead_.

 

“You won’t be seeing me again,” Renly called out to him, breaking Sandor away from his thoughts, and then Renly proceeded forward against the crowd of the pub. Sandor watched in silence as Renly parted a way past the bodies until he reached the door, and the man disappeared from his pub into the night. Sandor didn’t know if he would never see him again. Somehow in this city, that seemed unlikely.

 

Sandor scooped up the coin and pocketed it, returning to work as if nothing had happened.

 

When the night was over, the three of them closed up the pub. Asha called cabs for the inebriated patrons who had driven themselves there, and Allard pulled stock from the storeroom as Sandor cleaned up the tables. It might have been his business, but he wasn’t above getting his hands dirty with basic work. The cabs came to pick up the drunkards, and Sandor headed out in his car as Allard made his way across the parking lot.

 

Asha, however, had followed Sandor to his car.

 

“What’s wrong with you?” Asha called out from behind. “You haven’t been the same since you came back. Something’s changed in you.”

 

“Something changes in everybody sooner or later,” Sandor answered her, and he turned around to face Asha. As cold as it was, she had no business keeping them out longer than they needed to be out. Both of them should be driving their way home right now in the comfort of the heat of their cars.

 

“I liked you better before,” Asha told him. “At least then you acted like you had something to live for.”

 

Sandor couldn’t help but grit his teeth. “And you know me so well since when?”

 

Asha held her hands up in her defense. “All right, boss,” she said. “Have it your way, and put up your wall.” She stalked away from him after that, and he didn’t stop her. Sandor watched her get into her car, and then he got into his own and started the engine. Sandor sat there for a while until the inside of the car became warm. By the time it had, the parking lot was empty with the exception of his car sitting by itself in the darkness. He pulled out of the parking lot, turning onto the street, and drove all the way home without the radio.

 

The streets were empty at this hour. It was almost four in the morning, and most people were asleep in their beds. Sandor arrived at his apartment building, and he took the elevator up instead of the stairs. His floor was quiet when he stepped out onto it, and he walked up to the door of his apartment with his keys ready. Once he was inside, Sandor kicked the door shut as usual. He threw his keys on the kitchen counter, but then he turned around to lock the door by hand. In the past he hadn’t always bothered with locking his door every night, but he had the misfortune of making some enemies since then, and he also had too much money lying inside of his apartment. Hidden, of course, but not undetectable to people who were desperate enough to find it.

 

After a hot shower and a small meal, Sandor found himself in bed. He stared up at the ceiling, and a little light came on near the right of his ear. When he turned to look, it was just the screen of his phone flashing on temporarily because he had connected it to the charger. The phone was lying on the bed beside him, but there were no missed messages or calls. There was a time when he couldn’t even lie down without receiving one, but it was silent in his room. The screen flashed back to darkness, and Sandor turned his head away from it. He didn’t expect to get messages from her anymore. If she had any sense at all, she would stay away from him in every way possible. After what he had done to her, Sansa would be crazy not to.

 

In that moment as he lay in bed, he remembered all the times Sansa had called or messaged him in the middle of the night. He remembered all the times where he had done the same, too. Sandor remembered the first night the two of them had met at the bar in his pub, and how she had come back again when she didn’t take no for an answer. He remembered driving her home. He remembered taking her to the pier because that was where she had wanted to go that night, and he also remembered how she had held onto his jacket, keeping it for weeks. Weeks that had turned into months. Months until Ned had returned it to him.

 

Sandor had given Sansa his jacket because she had been cold out in the wind that night, but she had forgotten to return it and he had forgotten to take it back. Ned Stark, though, had been thoughtful enough to return it during his accusations, but before that evening in front of the pub, Sandor had already bought a new one to replace it. He had tucked the old one away in the back of his closet. Sandor had thrown the jacket onto the ground in front of Ned’s feet, but when Ned had left, Sandor had taken it inside of his pub with him. When he had left work that night, he had it washed and stuffed away into the back of his closet. After all, it was his jacket. There was no reason to throw it away.

 

He had hidden it mostly because if Ned ever saw him wearing that jacket again, then it would be over, so he either wore the new jacket instead of the old one or one of his other jackets. He had a few lying around. Sandor turned his head towards his closet, staring at the closed door. He pushed himself up from his bed and crossed the room, pulling open the closet door. His hand pushed aside all of the clothes on hangers out of the way until he saw a dark form lying against the wall to the left by itself. Pulling it out of his closet, Sandor’s gaze roved over his old jacket as he turned around to put it into view of the light from his window. The moonlight caught on it, shining on the leather.

 

Carefully, he pulled it off the hanger and tossed the hanger onto the floor of his closet. Sandor closed the door behind himself, and he brought the jacket over to the bed with him. He paused at the foot of the bed, slowly lifting the fabric to his nose to breathe in and see if her scent was still on it. Sandor smelled nothing but soap, though. However, Sansa had slept with this jacket for weeks. Maybe even for months. He couldn’t smell her scent on it anymore because he had washed it after he had thrown it onto the ground outside of his pub, but the jacket was the only thing he had that was any type of connection to her.

 

As much as it made him feel like a child for doing it, Sandor returned to the bed with the jacket in his hands. He couldn’t sleep comfortably in a jacket, but he laid it beside him on the bed. Turning away from it, he closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep, but he couldn’t sleep with the jacket beside him. Sandor kept opening up his eyes and glancing over at it until he finally turned onto his side and drew the jacket into his arms, hugging it to his chest.

 

He fell asleep like that, hugging his own jacket, because it was the last thing he had of her.

 

 


	105. Care for No One

_* * *_

 

The gate was open when the cab pulled up to Robert and Cersei’s residence.

 

The sight was unusual for Jaime. If they could help it, they kept that gate closed and locked at all times. He furrowed his brow, looking up through the window at the top of the gate as the cab slid past it. What he expected to see there, Jaime wasn’t sure. Perhaps a bird of prey circling overhead, ready to peck his eyes out. Jaime huffed at the macabre thought and turned his attention forward again as the cab proceeded steadily along the driveway.

 

The path was lined with withered hedges on either side. They were a dull green spotted with brown and yellow patches. Their thin, shrunken leaves exposed the slender branches underneath them. Jaime slouched in the backseat as they drew closer to the manor. It wasn’t long before the house came into view, though, and it loomed over the landscape with white-accented brick walls against a dark grey sky. With the half-dead hedges, it looked like something out of a horror movie. The thought wasn’t a comforting one for Jaime.

 

The cab came to a slow halt, crunching on rocks beneath its wheels.

 

“Wait for me,” Jaime told the cab driver. He opened the door and stepped out, the rocks crunching beneath his feet outside the door. With his hand grasping the cold frame, Jaime peered across the distance at the house. He wondered if even being here was a good idea.

 

“That’ll cost you,” the cab driver replied, pulling Jaime from his thoughts.

 

“I’ll gladly pay,” Jaime replied idly. He said it without looking at the driver, and then he shut the door.

 

Jaime crossed the distance to the steps on the porch. When he reached the front door, he knocked a few times in a row. It was silent at first. No sound answered him back for some time. Jaime reached out and knocked again, feeling himself grow impatient too soon. He had seen none of their cars in the driveway, but it hadn’t crossed Jaime’s mind that they might not be home before he had hopped into a cab and took a scenic tour through half of Kingsland to get here.

 

 _Where is she?_ Jaime asked himself, frowning and knocking a third time.

 

At last, he heard footsteps echoing through the long hallway inside. As it opened up, he was greeted with the sight of his sister, Cersei, dressed in a simple wrap gown of deep red fabric that reached down to her knees. Her feet were bare. Her hair was in a bun, but golden tendrils hung loose about her face.

 

Her mouth parted in shock at the sight of him, and her eyes seemed to light up as well. They seemed to glow brighter in his presence. In a past life of his, Jaime might have mistaken that look for happiness, but he knew better now than to go trusting his heart when it came to his sister.

 

“Cersei,” he greeted her.

 

“Jaime, you’ve come to see me,” she replied almost happily, if happiness could be attributed to his sister. Cersei took a step forward to be closer to him, reaching out to touch his arm with a firm grasp. Her fingers were light but strong. “Please, come in.”

 

Jaime followed her lead, and she led him into the house by his arm. The shadows surrounded them when she shut the door. It closed with a dull thud, leaving him with the sense of the hall closing in on them, too. Though they had the sunlight in their hair, they had spent many of their childhood days in darkness. The dark brought back those memories with Cersei he had soon wished he had forgotten. There was no ill will in his need to forget, though. Jaime loved his sister, he did. He loved her very much, but they were not the same people they once were, and he was not delighted anymore by the pull of those memories.

 

They were a dark spot on his mind now, and he could not hide them from her.

 

As they walked through the foyer into a smaller hallway, they came out in a vast sitting room at the end of the house. It struck Jaime all of a sudden how bare the house was now. The furniture was sparse. Most of it was gone. The drapes were even missing from the windows, letting the soft grey light of a cloudy day peer into the many long window panes that lined the walls. When he glanced down at the floor, he even saw light spots on the carpet where the rugs had once sat. The rugs were no longer there either.

 

Jaime was baffled. He lifted his head back up, focusing his gaze on Cersei.

 

“Where is everything?” Jaime asked her. “What’s going on?”

 

“We’re moving,” Cersei replied coolly, reaching out for a glass of wine sitting on the only surface object in the entire room, an elegant side table against the wall to his left. It was red wine, a deep burgundy so dark it was almost black. The glass was nearly empty. Cersei had been drinking since before he arrived. “Well,” she said, pausing right before the glass touched her lips. “Joffrey, Myrcella, Tommen, and me. Robert is staying here.”

 

Jaime was silent for only a moment as the implications sunk in. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from asking the question out loud. “Why?”

 

Cersei drank what was left of the wine, and then she placed the empty glass back onto the table. The sound rang out in the open, near vacant room.

 

“We’re getting a divorce,” she said with finality as she stared at Jaime. “What do you _think_ , Jaime? We’ll be out before the end of the month if we’re lucky. I can’t stand another moment around that drunken fool.”

 

Jaime’s eyes cut to the empty glass on the side table. “He isn’t the only drunk, is he?”

 

“I have to drink if I’m to put up with him,” Cersei answered in a flippant tone.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

Cersei fell still. Her eyes were staring at some light spot on the carpet. “Father’s.”

 

Jaime couldn’t believe his ears. The shock was instant, and his jaw fell loose from it. He was unhinged at such an announcement, and every instinct in him brought his feet straight to Cersei. “He was _murdered_ in his own house,” Jaime hissed at her, “and now you want to _live_ in it?”

 

Cersei wheeled her head to face him, glowering with all of her might. “ _Yes_ ,” she hissed right back. “It’s _Father’s_. Someone has to take care of it, Jaime. Someone has to give a damn, and that someone isn’t _you_ and it sure as hell isn’t Tyrion.”

 

“It’s a _house_!” Jaime argued in disbelief. “It can be sold!”

 

Cersei shoved at him. Jaime almost lost his balance, but he caught himself in time to stay upright on his feet. Once he looked around for Cersei, she was no longer at his side. She stood several feet away, glaring at him with the fire of a thousand suns.

 

“It’s not just a house!” Cersei hollered back. “It’s a _legacy_ , a legacy that you and Tyrion couldn’t be bothered to uphold in his absence! Tyrion, I understand, but I expected more from _you_. Father created an empire, and you threw him to the wolves the first chance you got, and Tyrion—” Cersei huffed in disbelief, torn somewhere between anger and some twisted form of amusement. “He was probably involved as well, that little wretch. He always wanted to drag Father down—”

 

“Listen to yourself!” Jaime yelled, gesturing wildly at her. “You sound mad!”

 

Cersei slowly looked at him. Her eyes had been wandering, but she fell still and so did they. Jaime saw them widen, and he saw her jaw line tighten.

 

“Someone murdered our father,” she said in a deceptively quiet voice. “Someone walked into his house,” Cersei continued, her feet little by little guiding her steps towards Jaime, “as he was drinking his tea and smoking his pipe, reading his newspaper by the fire, and they _tortured_ him before they shot him in cold blood. They stole from him to make it look like a burglar attempt gone bad, but I know it wasn’t a burglary and you know it wasn’t a burglary. Someone _killed_ our father in his own house, and our father deserves justice.”

 

Jaime clenched his teeth down so hard it hurt. It was all he could do to stop from shaking. “And what has this got to do with you getting a divorce and moving?” he asked quietly.

 

The burning look in Cersei’s eyes cooled down, and there was a glint in her gaze. Jaime had never recalled seeing such a look in her before, but then again, maybe it had always been there and he had just been too blind to see it. She turned away from him, walking over to the empty wine glass and scooping it up in her hand. When she faced him again, she wasn’t smiling, but she looked proud. It was like she was pleased with herself as if she had accomplished something he had not.

 

“You were too reckless,” Cersei revealed. “You always have been. You never had leadership in you, Jaime. You were a follower. You were good at serving. That’s why Father relied on you the way he did. It was why he never pulled you into the center with us, and Tyrion . . . ” Cersei looked away, huffing in amusement. “Father never trusted him. I dare say he never loved him either. He was a pesky little nuisance that we put up with because we _had_ to—”

 

In that moment it dawned on Jaime all of a sudden. Everything fell into place like chips on a board, and he was a pawn in a larger game. A larger game controlled by Tywin, by Cersei, by Kevan and Tygett . . .

 

All of them been playing him, and they had been doing it for years.

 

Jaime took a step back from her despite the distance, and Cersei took notice of it. Her sharp green eyes cut towards him, seeing his move, calculating it like he was a moving piece on a chessboard. She wouldn’t strike him. She would never strike him, but she was looking to use him. Cersei had always used him. It was half the reason why things weren’t the same between them anymore.

 

“You’ve been a part of this,” Jaime said in a quiet voice, finding the words hard to get out. His throat wanted to close in on itself. It wanted him to choke on the words. “All along, you’ve been a part of this, and you hid it from me?”

 

Cersei raised her eyebrows. “Should I have trusted you with it? Look at where it got you with Father—”

 

“And that’s _my_ fault?” Jaime shot back, pointing at his own chest. He was angry now. “Those records existed because of _you_ —”

 

“And I ordered them to be _destroyed_!”

 

“Well,” Jaime said coldly, “it looks like I’m not the only one who makes mistakes in this family.”

 

Cersei was looking at her glass like she wanted more wine in it, but it was empty. She placed the cup down with more force this time, unwilling to make the walk to the kitchen to pour herself some more. He could tell she wanted more, though. The look shone bright in her eyes. Jaime wondered if she didn’t want to make the trip because she wasn’t willing to walk away from him. Cersei stormed off from a lot of people, but she had rarely done so with Jaime.

 

As much as they fought, the pull was always strong.

 

At this moment, he expected Cersei to lose her cool entirely. It was not like her to bottle up her wrathful emotions. However, her honesty, her softness, her smiles, those were things she hid, and she hid them well when the occasion called for it. Her anger, by comparison, knew no boundaries.

 

Cersei did the exact opposite of what Jaime expected of her, though. He watched her take a deep breath, calming the tightness in her nerves. Her arms were loose afterwards, and she let them hang at her sides as her feet slowly took her to him. Jaime didn’t move as Cersei approached him, and she paused at his side to stand barely a few inches away from his shoulder.

 

She leaned in so close that he could smell her perfume. It was an overpowering scent, feminine but musky, and Jaime closed his eyes. Cersei grazed his arm, but he couldn’t tell if it was on purpose or an accident. It was probably on purpose. Her hand touched his arm, running slowly up his arm to his shoulder, where she rested it at last.

 

Her breath was close to his ear when she spoke.

 

“You can still have a life, Jaime,” Cersei murmured, her breath causing a shiver to pass involuntarily through Jaime’s neck and down into his shoulder. “Father and you made a good team. You made a good team for years. He always said so. You were his favorite son, Jaime. He loved you very much. The betrayal hurt him deep, but he was always willfully blind when he wanted to be. You know it’s true. He knew about us in a way. I think he always suspected something, but he never knew why you betrayed him. He didn’t know about Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen . . . ”

 

Her hand slid slowly from one shoulder to the other as she walked behind him to the other side. Jaime reopened his eyes, staring forward blankly at a vacant room before him.

 

 _Vacant_ , he thought, _like her words_.

 

“You don’t have to skulk around in that twit’s house all day,” Cersei continued, “wasting your life away. You were born to do greater things, Jaime, as was I. We were _born_ for this. Father wanted us to continue his legacy, and together, we can accomplish anything. We are strong together. We can be unstoppable, you and I. No one would stand in our way . . . ” She leaned in closer to his ear, lowering her voice until he could barely hear the words above her breath. “You won’t get your old life back. Those days are over. You won’t rejoin the force. You are no longer a man of the law, but you can be something _more_ than that, Jaime. Together, we can be something greater than even our own father was . . . ”

 

She was asking him to do things he was no longer capable of doing. Cersei was flat out asking him to return to his old life, a life he had given up for a chance to be something better than a man without honor. He had broken every rule for her and for Father, but this was where it had gotten him. Loyalty to his family took away everything that mattered to Jaime. It took away what he loved most in the world, his position and his reputation and his influence. All of it _mattered_ to him. As much as he tried to pretend that it didn’t, it did. It always had.

 

He swallowed past a hard lump in his throat. There were many things he would do to get them back, but this wasn’t one of them.

 

Cersei sensed his tenseness and pulled away from him. His silence didn’t anger her. On the contrary, she walked around to stand in front of him and look him in the eyes.

 

Jaime gazed back, and he wondered when her eyes had become so dead.

 

“You need time to think about it,” Cersei said, louder than before and her voice firmer as well. “I understand. Take your time, Jaime, but make a wiser decision this time than you did the last time. Family matters more than anything else. You used to believe that until you found that ridiculously mannish wench to take my place.” Cersei stepped closer to him again, raising her chin. A twitch in her cheek betrayed her emotions. _She is hurt_ , Jaime realized. “But I always knew you’d find your way back to me,” Cersei added softly. “Or you wouldn’t be here now.”

 

Jaime felt his jaw clench tighter at the slight towards Brienne, but Cersei gave her weakness away to him. She still believed he loved her in that way when he didn’t anymore. While Jaime wasn’t the type to use someone, the information was still a useful point against his sister—if he ever needed to use it.

 

“They’re asking questions about you,” he said in a low voice. Jaime didn’t know why now he wanted to warn her of all things, but perhaps it was because of the kids and because she was still his sister, no matter what.

 

“And I trust you’ve said nothing,” Cersei prodded, her eyes calculating him.

 

“I knew nothing to tell,” Jaime murmured, “and besides, you’re my sister.”

 

Cersei leaned close to his face. “And Tywin was your _father_.”

 

“I did it for the children,” Jaime hissed, feeling indignation rise in his chest, “and for you.”

 

The expression on Cersei’s face altered suddenly before him, but Jaime couldn’t read it. It seemed as if a smile grazed over her lips, but maybe it was just softness in her features that he mistook for something more. She leaned closer to him and cupped his face with one hand, and for a moment, Jaime was afraid she meant to kiss him.

 

As she stood up slightly on the tips of her toes, Cersei placed a gentle kiss on his forehead in the manner of a mother to a frightened child. Jaime felt himself instinctively close his eyes. Her lips lingered for a moment, and then she pulled back. Her presence left him.

 

Jaime opened his eyes to see her walking away from him.

 

“Come to Father’s house when you’re ready,” Cersei called out to him, her tone devoid of all feeling this time. She was back to her old self in a heartbeat. Jaime watched as Cersei disappeared around a corner at the end of the room, which led into the kitchen. The empty wine glass was dangling from her fingers again. “You can show yourself out,” she added when she was out of sight.

 

Jaime was left staring at the nothingness where she stood only a moment ago, the shock still apparent within him. Before he could consider staying any longer for whatever reasons his mind might conjure up, he turned around quickly to leave the house.

 

The cab driver was still waiting outside. Jaime chucked a tip at the man for his wait, and then he gave him the directions to his house. Jaime sat back in the seat, his mind set in turmoil.

_Come to Father’s house when you’re ready_ , Cersei’s voice rang out to him in the back of his mind. Jaime chewed on the nail of his thumb the whole ride home.           

 

By the time they reached his house, he had bitten his finger to the quick until it bled.

 

 


	106. All This Bad Blood

_* * *_

 

Sansa lifted the strap of her messenger bag over her head, slinging it at the foot of her bed by the corner post. She had just gotten by home from school, and she was tired and hungry. Her first thought was to raid the refrigerator and see if she could find something to snack on before dinner. If she was lucky, she wouldn’t have to prepare anything or cook. Even if it was fresh fruit, it would do. She had skipped lunch today because she wasn’t hungry then, but she was feeling it in her stomach now. As she quickly turned around to head downstairs again, Sansa caught herself from taking another step forward. She was frozen in place, staring ahead.

 

There, against the wall behind her door, was a black duffle bag.

 

Sansa stared at it for a while without moving. Hesitation thrummed through her bones, causing her fingers to tremble at her sides. She cut her eyes towards the hallway beyond her bedroom door. No one was there. It was empty, and all she saw was the light blue wall covered in a few picture frames of old family photos. Arya’s door was just down the hall, but Arya wasn’t home yet.

 

She was probably hanging out over at Gendry’s again.

 

Sansa looked back to the duffle bag, her lips parting in confusion at the sight of it. It wasn’t her duffle bag. She would remember if she owned a black duffle bag, and she would certainly remember if she had stored it behind her bedroom door like that. She wondered how long it had been there. For days, perhaps. It looked beaten in by the door hitting it one too many times, so it must have been sitting there for a while now, and she just hadn’t noticed it.

 

Maybe Arya had put it there. Maybe Bran or Robb, even? It could have been Jon. Perhaps even her parents had put it there. Still, it was strange. No one had told her about it, and Sansa had a feeling that if someone in her family had left a big duffle bag in her room, they would have said something to her. Except for Bran, though. Sometimes he couldn’t be bothered to remember things if he didn’t want to. He had a stubborn streak in him a mile wide.

 

Swallowing nervously because of her thoughts, Sansa took a few cautious steps forward. She wasn’t sure what to expect inside of it. There was nothing living in it or the bag would be moving, which it certainly was not.

 

Sansa decided to test it out before she opened it. As she drew closer, she put her hand on the door knob. Gripping it firmly, Sansa used the door as leverage while she lifted her foot and kicked the bag with the tip of her foot. Immediately, she darted backwards as if in fear the bag might suddenly come alive and lash out at her.

 

Nothing happened, of course.

 

Sansa sighed deeply, rolling her eyes at her reaction, and knelt down before the duffle bag. She grasped the zipper in her fingers, holding the opposite end with her other hand. The zipper opened effortlessly, revealing a pile of clothes within. Sansa furrowed her brow, pulling the bag open further.

 

They were her clothes.

 

She recognized the patterns and the designs, and Sansa pulled some of them out, inspecting them closely to make sure she wasn’t imagining things. They were all definitely her clothes. Yoga pants and spaghetti strap tops, socks and panties, as well as a few thin nightgowns. As she sifted through the clothes in confusion, it finally hit Sansa where these clothes had come from, and she froze all over again with her hands still in the bag.

 

These were the clothes she had stored at Sandor’s house for whenever she spent the night there with him.

 

Unexpectedly, her hands began to tremble. She had been spending every waking day trying to forget about him, never quite successfully, shoving his memory as far back into her brain as her mind would allow. She had been going to school as people stared at her in the hallways, whispering about her story as if she couldn’t hear them. The girl who had been kidnapped by Gregor Clegane. Some of them said she had been tortured. Others said far worse things had happened to her. If rumors were to be believed, she had something carved into her skin. Some said it was a name, and some said it was an animal.

 

None of it was true, of course, but Sansa didn’t talk to them. It was none of their business, and she couldn’t wait to be out of high school so she could escape it all.

 

She could start over in college. She could go somewhere where they didn’t know her story, or where people at least didn’t care, and she could make new friends and a new life for herself.

 

 _A life_ , she thought, _without Sandor Clegane_.

 

The thought, however reasonable it was, brought her only sadness.

 

She didn’t know what had happened that night. No matter how many times she had tried to make sense of his actions the last time she saw him, Sansa could not figure out what would turn him against her in such a horrific way. She had come to trust him. She had begun to love him. She had even shared her first time with him, but in the end none of that had stopped Sandor from pulling a knife on her and holding it to her throat.

 

None of it had stopped him from threatening her life.

 

It took Sansa a moment before she even realized her vision was blurry. Her eyes burned hot, and when she blinked, large tears fell from her eyes onto her hands below. She was still gripping the bag. Quickly, Sansa let it go. She grabbed one of the shirts before her and wiped her eyes with it, letting the fabric catch her tears. Soon, the mess was gone, but her eyes were undoubtedly red. Sansa sat down on the floor, waiting until the burning sensation in her eyes went away. By then, the redness might have faded away.

 

When she felt comfortable enough to face her family again, Sansa stood up and made her way downstairs. She stopped her brothers, her mother, and her father. All of them had no idea what she was talking about when she mentioned the bag she found in her room, suggesting her to check with someone else each time. She had run through all of them, though, all of them but Arya.

 

As she was standing there in the living room, defeated with her search, the front door opened up and Arya walked into the house.

 

“Arya,” Sansa suddenly said, causing her sister to pause in the doorway.

 

Arya raised her eyebrows, and then she went to close the door. “Yes?” Arya said back, facing her sister again.

 

“Did you leave a black duffle bag in my room?”

 

Arya looked perplexed, and she slowly shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “Can’t remember one. Unless I did it sleepwalking.”

 

“No jokes,” Sansa said quietly. “Yes or no?”

 

“No,” Arya told her flatly, looking her straight in the eyes.

 

Sansa felt her heart speed up suddenly in her chest, and she ran one of her hands through her hair as she looked away from Arya. “All right,” she replied in a tight voice, and Sansa turned away from her sister as fast as she could and hurried for the stairs.

 

“Wait,” Arya called out, hurrying after her. “Wait just a minute, Sansa—”

 

Sansa kept going until she reached her bedroom, though, but she turned around in the doorway to face Arya in the hall.

 

“What’s this about?” Arya asked her, concern written all over her face. She slung her backpack to the side in the hallway, letting it fall to the floor. Sansa let out a deep sigh.

 

She stepped aside to let Arya pass by her. “Come in,” Sansa said.

 

Arya came into her room, and Sansa shut the door behind her. Immediately, she gestured at the black duffle bag beside the wall next to her door. Arya looked at it and shrugged her shoulders.

 

“Okay, so it’s bag,” Arya said. “What’s the big deal?”

 

“It’s not my bag,” Sansa answered in a quiet voice, “but it has my things in it.”

 

Arya turned towards Sansa. She raised her eyebrows, a blank look on her face. “I need a bigger explanation than that for why this bag is bothering you so much.”

 

Sansa sighed yet again, gesturing at the bag with her hand. “It has my things in it that I . . . left at Sandor’s house for whenever I spent the night. When we broke up, I never had time to get them from his house, and now it’s all here in my room and no one has admitted to putting it here.”

 

Arya stared at Sansa. Sansa had never told her sister the whole story of what had occurred that night when Arya came into her room and found the knife just lying on the floor. Sansa had lied instead, saying she had used the knife to cut some loose threads from her clothes. She told Arya that Sandor came by the house and broke up with her, but she never said anything else. Arya had always looked at her funny. Arya had even said _you’re lying_ , but she never forced Sansa to give up the truth. Her sister had just given Sansa her space.

 

Probably because Sansa wasn’t the only one keeping secrets.

 

Arya sighed as well and looked back at the bag. “Are you sure Sandor didn’t just bring it with him that night he broke up with you and left it here in your room, and you never noticed?”

 

The thought hadn’t occurred to Sansa. It hadn’t occurred to her because Sandor had been drunk out of his mind that night, terrifying and holding a knife against her throat. Sansa brought her hand up to her neck. She could still remember the cold steel pressing against her skin, threatening to break it.

 

Nothing Sandor had done that night made sense. It had been a random, drunken attack. There was no rhyme to it, no reason. He was mad, Sansa had tried to tell herself over and over again, mad like that brother of his, Gregor Clegane. But no matter how many times she said it to herself, though, it never made it any truer. She never really believed it, even when she wanted to. She was terrified of him, but she could never bring herself to believe that Sandor was mad or evil or even a bad person, and so that night seemed like just a bad dream. Sansa tried so hard to forget it, and yet she never could.

 

The problem was if she acknowledged that Sandor had packed up her things in a duffle bag and brought them with him that night, it meant he had planned it.

 

It meant that night wasn’t a drunken accident.

 

It meant he knew exactly what he was doing the whole time he was doing it.

 

It seemed for a moment as if all the sound had gone out of Sansa’s ears and left a dull drumming noise in its place. It might have been her heart or the air around her. She wasn’t sure, but it felt as though her heart had dropped into her stomach and left her chest empty. Impossible, but it was a feeling and nothing more. Her ribcage was hollow, her ears were ringing, and her hands were trembling again.

 

“You’re not telling me everything,” Arya’s voice interrupted, cutting through the ringing noise and drawing Sansa’s gaze back to her sister.

 

Suddenly, everything sounded normal again, but her chest still felt hollow. Sansa took a deep breath to calm herself, which made the shakiness in her chest more pronounced. Arya cast her gaze down, catching it.

 

“Sansa,” Arya said more softly than normal, “what happened that night?”

 

“I already told you everything,” Sansa lied, unable to meet her sister’s eyes when she said it. It was wrong of her to lie to Arya. Sansa felt the guilt immediately for it.

 

“Fine,” Arya said, drawing her voice tight. “Lie to me. Again.”

 

Arya turned around to leave. Sansa didn’t quite realize it until Arya grasped the door handle and opened her bedroom door again.

 

“Wait! Arya!” Sansa called out, but Arya kept walking.

 

Arya moved fast, unwilling to stop.

 

“I don’t want to talk to you!” Arya hollered back, and Sansa froze one step out of her doorway. She flinched when she heard Arya’s bedroom door slam shut. Arya was angry with her, and she had every right to be. But at the same time, it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair because Sansa couldn’t share that with her sister. She couldn’t tell Arya without causing something bad to happen. If Arya knew the truth, she would act out against Sandor. She could get hurt. Sandor could get hurt.

 

Sansa knew she had to hide it from Arya, even if it hurt.

 

She wasn’t even angry with Arya. She was just miserable. Inside and out, she felt miserable. Every moment of every day, it took all of Sansa’s willpower to hold it together. She held it together, too. She put on her game face and walked through the day with her head held high, while inside she was falling apart. Counselors helped her through most of it, but there were parts even they couldn’t reach deep inside of her, parts only Sansa could see. No matter how many ways she thought to explain it out loud, she could never do it.

 

Slowly, she walked over to her bed. She sat down on the edge, staring across the room at the black duffle bag.

 

Sandor had definitely packed her clothes in it, and if no one had found it outside by the front door and brought it up to her bedroom for her, then there was only one explanation for its appearance here in her room.

 

Sandor had brought it with him that night.

 

He had packed up her things, and he had brought it with him. He had known he wouldn’t be seeing her again, or he wouldn’t have bothered to bring it with him. That meant he knew what he was doing. It meant Sandor had pulled that knife on her on purpose. It meant he had brought the knife on purpose, too. It meant he had broken into her house on purpose.

 

Sansa had thought he stumbled into her room so drunk and oblivious to what he was doing, but that couldn’t have been true.

 

As she stared at the duffle bag, she realized Sandor had planned the entire thing.

 

Perhaps it should have put a cold chill into her body, but Sansa felt oddly calm about it. For some reason, she wasn’t as scared anymore as she used to be. Now, she was full of questions instead. Sansa wanted to know the truth. She wanted to know _why_ Sandor had pulled a knife on her and threatened her life like that. She wasn’t ready to ask him herself, but the questions were there, racing through her head. They were without answers, though.

 

If Sansa had known any of Sandor’s friends, she would have gone to them first, but Loras had been the only friend that Sansa knew of. Him and Sarella came to mind, but there was no one else. Sansa didn’t feel comfortable going to Sandor’s place of work and questioning his staff either. It was his business, and he could walk in anytime. Plus, his employees might be more inclined than a friend to say something to him about her snooping around and asking questions.

 

No, going to the pub wasn’t a good choice.

 

Sansa fell back onto her bed, staring up at the ceiling. Her plate was full for this month and the next two. She was finishing up her final year of school, preparing for graduation, and preparing for college. She had already applied to a few of the local ones that had caught her interest. Sansa had wanted to stay home and live with her parents for now. It wasn’t as if she had the money to live on her own. A scholarship covered her intuition and books, but it wouldn’t pay for room and board. She didn’t even have her own car, so that was a problem, too.

 

As much as she wanted to make sense of this, right now it seemed like she didn’t have the time. There were bigger things in her life she needed to focus on, and if Sandor had cared for her as much as he had told her, he wouldn’t have pulled a knife on her. He wouldn’t have threatened her life. He would never have done that at all. He wouldn’t have put her in harm’s way, especially not by his own hand, not for any reason in the world.

 

Despite all of the questions running through her head, Sansa closed her eyes and willed for everything to disappear from her mind.

 

She lay on her bed for some time in silence, just breathing in and out and trying her best to relax. She was wound so tight. She just needed to not think about any of it. None of it was worth it right now. She didn’t have the time to be searching after Sandor, wondering why he did those things he did to her after he had saved her from his insane brother, Gregor.

 

He was supposed to be her knight in shining armor.

 

. . . _but it turns out the armor is all rusted_ , Sansa thought to herself as she lay there, picturing the image in her head. The armor was all rusted, and beneath the mask, the face was a hideous half-burnt scowl, monstrous to behold.

 

Somehow, though, it didn’t scare her like she thought it would.

 

Sansa opened her eyes, staring back up at her ceiling again. She was still just in her room, and no one was there with her. Slowly, she pushed herself up from the bed and headed downstairs. She had some important things to catch up on, and she might as well use her time wisely before the school year was over in the blink of an eye. Three months could go by fast if she used them properly.

 

As she walked the steps one by one with her hand on the rail, Sansa realized she didn’t need a knight, anyway.

 

She could do just fine on her own.

 

 


	107. Avalanche

_* * *_

 

If she closed her eyes, Arya could tune out the world to a dull hum. The blowing wind became nothing more than a soft tickle in her ear, a whisper trying to tell her of its secrets as if it had any more to give. There were no more secrets in the world, though. The stories were all just that, stories. All of the treasures had been dug up. All of the islands had been discovered. All of the secrets places had been exposed, excavated, and named anew. There was no more magic in the world as far as Arya was concerned.

 

There was only the disappointment that it couldn’t live up to the wonder she once beheld in it as a child.

 

The rustling leaves caught in the sway of the wind, causing a whistle to reach her ears. They sounded as if they were a hundred miles away from her, a foreboding noise of warning as they resounded through the forest. She didn’t trust the leaves anymore than she trusted the wind, though. They were all liars. She couldn’t trust them anymore than she could once trust the blindfold over her eyes. Arya could still remember how it felt to have them bound behind a piece of dirty cloth, restricting her vision to blackness and nothingness. It was why her eyes were closed now. She was trying to understand what had been so frightening about not being able to see. She had still been able to hear just like she could hear right now. Her sense of smell was stronger, too, though the air here was a thousand times cleaner than the air in the cabin. Arya breathed it in deeply, tasting its crispness on the back of her tongue.

 

Winter would be coming to an end soon. Arya could taste it on her tongue. With its demise, spring would be born again. The trees and all of the plants would awake from their slumber. Flowers would bloom again, and the waters would run clearer. If she strained her ears hard enough, she could hear them now. The soft tinkle of a running stream, flowing over rocks not too far away. Arya could run in it to find out where it led to. The water had to stop somewhere. Maybe it settled into a lake or a pond somewhere in the forest, or maybe it just continued into another stream or a river.

 

With the failing weather and the fading snows, Arya hadn’t needed to wear a big coat today. It wasn’t as cold as that. Her jacket was good enough for this current weather, insulated and sturdy as well as lightweight and not too thick. Its hood rested beneath her head while she lay upon her back on the wooden planks of an abandoned tree house she had discovered in the woods last year. When she had found it, Arya had placed a sign on the outside to mark it as hers.

 

 _Acorn Hall_ , Arya thought as she lay there. It was a simple name, and the grounds surrounding it were strewn with acorns. It wasn’t a huge tree house, so it didn’t really qualify as a hall, but none of that mattered. This was her place, and she had the right to name it whatever she wanted to name it.

 

She had shared its location only with one other person.

 

 _Gendry_ , she thought this time, her hands sliding over the wooden boards beneath her, feeling the rough and prickly texture against her fingers. Her thoughts were filled with longing because he wasn’t there with her now. That wasn’t his fault, though. She hadn’t told him she was going out to the tree house today, and she hadn’t invited him along. As she thought about it now, maybe she should have.

 

But she had wanted to be alone with her thoughts and alone with herself. Arya couldn’t do that with Gendry around her, distracting her from focusing.

 

They used to come here together all the time, but as of lately, the tradition had been broken. For a long time ever since that fateful event in December, Arya had sought safety in the shelter of her home, staying inside of the house most days until she had to go back to school last month. Going back to school hadn’t been easy either. Arya skipped classes a lot whenever the opportunity cropped up, running off somewhere with Lommy and Hot Pie. Sometimes she feigned to be sick so she could get out of going to school, and then she would either stay at home in her room or escape out here to the forest not far behind the area where they lived in Kingsland. Winterfell Avenue was full of houses, but it was lacking in trees. In places the sidewalks were sprinkled with a few of them planted in little circular pots cut into the concrete. Less than a mile straight down the road and behind the last crop of houses, though, a wide forest could be seen on the horizon.

 

Arya had never looked up the name of the forest on a map or asked anyone what the name of it was. She knew it wasn’t a part of the Kingswood. She wouldn’t be in it if it was a part of the Kingswood. The Kingswood was dark and deep, and it held bad memories for her. Memories she didn’t want to return to any time soon.

 

 _Or ever again_ , whispered a small voice in the back of her head.

 

Crossroads Camps for Troubled Teens was located upon the edge of Kingswood Forest, too. Arya wasn’t even sure if she wanted to go back to camp again this year, but she was sure her parents would make her. The only reason Arya didn’t want to return was because of its proximity to the Kingswood. Aside from that reason, Arya did want to go back. The camp was Syrio, her friends, Lommy and Hot Pie, Brienne, and Sandor. She saw three of them enough outside of the camp, though. Lommy and Hot Pie were both her friends, and they went to school together. The three of them shared a couple of classes as well.

 

As for Sandor, Arya didn’t see much of him these days. In fact, she hadn’t seen him at all since he had broken up with Sansa. Arya still felt suspicious about that night she came home and found Sansa huddled in her room with the lights off, but Sansa had never told her more than that Sandor had broken up with her. Arya couldn’t imagine anything worse than Sandor being drunk and stumbling away from the house like sad puppy down the road, paper bag wrapped bottle in hand. The mental image caused the corners of her mouth to wrinkle, and Arya shook away the thought. Whatever had happened between them that night, they weren’t together anymore. Maybe after everything, though, it was for the best.

 

But that didn’t mean Arya had to ignore Sandor, too. She had liked Sandor when she first met him, and then she hadn’t liked him and decided to make his life a living hell because he had hurt her sister and _nobody_ hurt her sister and got away with it. Shortly after that, the two of them had come to a truce after Sandor shot her down with paintball gun during camp and hit her in the back of the head with a foam axe. Looking back on it, Arya didn’t begrudge him. She did things ten times worse to him than that, after all.

 

If she went to camp this summer, it would be her last summer because next year she would be eighteen instead of sixteen, and then her parents couldn’t make her go even if they wanted to. Her birthday this year wasn’t that far away. It fell in April, and it was February. Two months from now, she would be seventeen.

 

 _Strange_ , Arya thought, wrinkling her nose as she lay there upon her back on hard wooden boards. Her arms were splayed on either side of her, her eyes squeezed shut. In just two months from now, she would be seventeen. It wasn’t that long ago that her sister, Sansa, was seventeen. They weren’t that far apart in age. Arya wanted to be eighteen now. She didn’t want to wait for it. She wanted to get out of school and get on with her life. There were bigger and better things to do than sort out math problems, write essays, and waste her time with things she would never use in the real world. School was a joke.

 

Sometimes, Arya thought, so was her life.

 

It wasn’t just her life, though. All of them had so much baggage now, even her. Arya briefly opened her eyes, staring up at the ceiling above. It was rickety with open cracks in the boards, and it needed patching. If it rained, she would get soaked. She should talk to Gendry about him helping her fix it. It would give them both something to do.

 

She was supposed to be focusing, but her focus was lost. Arya was thinking too much again, and thinking too much always ruined her focus. She sighed aloud deeply, slapping her hands against the floor of the tree house.

 

“It’s no use,” Arya said to herself, her eyes still closed. “I can’t focus.”

 

“What are you trying to focus on?” a voice called from below the tree house, and Arya shot upwards as her eyes flew open. She crawled over to the window on her knees and peered out of it.

 

Gendry was standing at the bottom of the tree house, looking up at her. One of his hands was folded into a fist and pressed against his waist, and the other one waved up at her when he spotted her peeking at him.

 

Arya lifted her head higher, so it wasn’t just her eyes peeking over the window’s ledge. She set her hands on the open window frame. She ought to put glass in the windows. Or at least make some curtains for this place. Arya wrinkled her nose again. She didn’t even know how to sew.

 

“How did you know I was here?” Arya threw back at him, ignoring his question.

 

Gendry raised his eyebrows. “I went to your house,” he said, “looking for you. Your parents said you had gone out, but they didn’t say you went out with any friends, so I assumed . . . ”

 

He had assumed right. Arya frowned to herself. She slumped down back into the tree house. _So much for focus_ , Arya thought.

 

“You can come up,” she hollered down to him, though she wasn’t in the window anymore. Arya crawled over to the door, which was only just a flap of cloth, and pulled it back to push the rope ladder down to him. It jingled on the way down. When it landed against the forest floor below, she saw Gendry walk up to it and grab it. She scooted herself back into the tree house and waited for him to reach the top.

 

When Gendry made it up, he pulled the ladder back into the tree house and set it aside next to the doorway. He turned to look at Arya as he crouched there. She was sitting next to the back wall, leaning against it, with her legs crossed in front of her. Arya stared back at him without saying anything, and after a moment of silence, Gendry crossed the distance between them and settled himself onto the floor next to her. He mimicked her, crossing his legs in front of himself as well, and rested his forearms on top of them.

 

“How are you doing?” he asked her.

 

“Fine,” Arya replied.

 

“Liar,” Gendry said softly, the corner of his mouth turning upwards just slightly. It wasn’t amusement. He wasn’t making fun of her, but he was pushing. Gendry had this bad habit of poking at a fire until the embers flew up into his eyes. Arya wasn’t sure where he got it from.

 

“Don’t call me a liar,” Arya said back.

 

Gendry’s expression turned somber. His dark hair was a mess atop his head. It always looked like he never bothered to run a comb or a brush through it. It stuck up in every direction all the time. His eyes, which were the exact opposite of his dark hair, were bright blue. They flared up sometimes, even though Arya didn’t think the color blue should look so fiery. Her sister’s eyes did that sometimes, though. Arya wished her eyes could do that, but they were too pale. Most of the time when she looked in the mirror at herself, her eyes just looked cold like ice.

 

“What are you doing out here?” Gendry finally asked, looking for a more neutral topic than asking about how she was doing.

 

“Focusing,” Arya told him.

 

“On what?”

 

Arya had to think about it for a moment as she gazed off to her right. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was trying to focus on. Clearing her mind, maybe. Syrio talked about it all the time at camp, but it was an art form she had yet to master. Arya wasn’t sure why either. It wasn’t like she wasn’t good at concentration. She was better than most of the other kids at it.

 

“Emptying my mind,” she answered at last. Arya lifted her eyes to Gendry’s face to see his expression this time.

 

He looked anxious. The feeling shone through his eyes more than anything, but Gendry tried to school it away as quickly as possible to hide it from her. “Is this something new you’re practicing?” Gendry tried to ask casually, but Arya heard the truth in his voice. He couldn’t hide it from her, even if he wanted to.

 

“Yeah,” she simply said. “I think it’ll help me. You know, with camp.”

 

 _With my memories_ is what she really meant, and she had no doubt that was what Gendry had heard beneath the actual words she had spoken out loud. It wasn’t a thing that they talked about, what had happened to her. It wasn’t something that Arya liked to talk about with anyone, not even Gendry. She had kept it to herself. She hid it away in dark, dank places deep inside of her beneath rusting, leaking pipes that felt like her insides sometimes. Only one person might understand.

 

Only one person.

 

Arya had never mustered up the courage to talk to him about it, though. Not yet, anyway. He might be able to help her, but Arya wasn’t ready to face it just yet. She was afraid of what it might mean if she faced it. Would she be a different person because of it? Would it change her? She had already changed a lot. What if she changed even more? Arya wasn’t sure if she was ready for that just yet. She wasn’t sure if she was ready for any of it, so she didn’t speak of it.

 

And Gendry, he tried to understand, but she could tell he didn’t.

 

Gendry heaved out a sigh, his chest rising and falling with the motion. He was exasperated. She could tell. Even when Gendry tried to hide something, he was painfully obvious about it. “Okay,” Gendry said, trying to sound casual again. “Just let me know if you need any help with it, yeah? Maybe I can help.”

 

“All right,” Arya agreed, though she felt like her fingers were crossed in the back of her mind somewhere as she said it. “I’ll let you know if I need it.”

 

“Are you going to stay out here all day?” he asked all of a sudden, not even two seconds after she had answered him. Gendry looked over at her, blinking vibrant blue eyes in her direction. They were wide and piercing, but somehow they were still comfortable to look at for Arya. “It’s going to rain soon. I can walk you back home.”

 

Arya didn’t want to leave the tree house so soon, but Gendry was right about the weather. She heard it on the news this morning before she went out. The forecast called for rain in the early evening, and it was already late afternoon by now. The sky above was overcast and foggy with dirty grey clouds sectioned into rolls. They hovered over everything, and somewhere beyond them, Arya wondered if it was the lowering sun that made them look so dirty. She glanced down at her hands, lifting them up to inspect them. They were dirty, too.

 

“Sure,” she said, pushing herself up onto her feet. The tree house was tall enough to stand in, but for some reason, they crawled and crouched in it a lot. Maybe it just felt like the right thing to do inside of tree house. Arya walked over to the rope ladder and knocked it over the edge, watching as it fell downwards and hit the forest floor below. Some of the scattered dead leaves crackled under the last few wooden rungs of a too long ladder.

 

Arya made her way down first, jumping off at the bottom. The dried up orange and yellow leaves crunched under her boots. She stepped aside from the ladder and glanced up, watching as Gendry descended as well. He did it more clumsily than her, she thought, and he had to wait until he reached the very bottom before he stepped off of the ladder. Gendry let go of it then, turning to face her. Usually, right about now, Arya would have made a smart comment, but her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth.

 

Gendry held his hand out to her, palm downward. “Ready?” he asked.

 

Arya looked down at his hand. He meant _are you ready to go home_ , but Arya began to think of all of the other possible meanings. _Are you ready to move forward_ , she heard beneath his words. _Are you ready to move on_. _Are you ready to forget about it all_. _Are you ready to be strong_. _Are you ready, Arya, are you ready_.

 

_Are you ready?_

 

The last thought rang out clearer than all the rest as if it had been spoken out loud instead of just a thought inside of her head. Arya closed her eyes against it and reopened them to look at Gendry. She lifted her hand to accept his, but she paused halfway in the motion, looking down at it.

 

It was covered in blood. Both of her hands. They were covered in blood. She felt it on her other hand without lifting it to look. She could _feel_ it. Warm, hot, sticky blood, dripping from her fingers on the dead leaves beneath her feet. Her hands were drenched in it. Red, red, red everywhere she could see. All over her fingers. Pouring down her wrist, staining the sleeve of her jacket. It was red, too, but it didn’t matter. The blood made it darker, deepened it.

 

Arya closed her eyes again for one second.

 

When she opened them again, the blood was gone. It was nowhere to be found. It was all in her head. Arya knew it. She had known it wasn’t real. Arya had washed her hands a million times, but it never seemed to erase the blood from the one place water couldn’t reach—her memory.

 

Looking up at Gendry again, she reached out and clasped his hand with hers. Her expression was softer, even though she didn’t smile.

 

“Ready,” Arya said.

 

 _Or not_ , her mind whispered back to her.

 

 


	108. Choose Another Way

_* * *_

 

Jaime sat on the curb, his elbows on his knees, slowly smoking a cigarette from between his fingers. His eyes were squinted against the glare from the sun as it drew lower in the sky near the horizon. It was the beginning of March, but it was still freezing in the city of Kingsland. Jaime had worn a thick enough jacket that he had managed to block out the worst of the cold. Willpower was a part of it, too. Without a job, there wasn’t much for him to do, so he spent his days going for long walks and jogs. The outdoor exposure had gotten him used to the chill. Smoking didn’t help him much when it came to the jogs, though. Jaime fell out of breath more often than not because of it.

 

He drew in a deep drag from the cigarette in his hand, and then pulled it away and tapped off the ash. Jaime had never been a smoker before, but his world had changed too much in recent times for him to be on perfectly healthy behavior. He had gotten it right with the walking and the jogging, but he had gotten it wrong when it came to the smoking and the drinking. Jaime had never been much of a drinker before, nor had he ever been a smoker until now. There had been special circumstances that had driven him towards it, though.

 

A few weeks after his encounter with Cersei in her half empty manor house, he had found himself pacing erratically with worry and thinking far too often about all of the things that he _didn’t_ know about his sister anymore. She had seemed to him a complete stranger after her revelations to him, and it had bothered Jaime—not knowing what his sister was capable of. He had always believed Cersei had her limits, the same as he had his, but everything he knew about his sister had been thrown into question. He couldn’t trust his instincts anymore when it came to her, nor his past knowledge.

 

Driven mad by curiosity and not wanting to make a commitment to her in order to find out what was going on her in court, Jaime had gone to the only person he knew that could help him.

 

His old work colleague, Varys.

 

Varys had numerous tricks and favors he could pull, so Jaime had asked Varys to tap his sister’s phone line. Despite it being highly illegal for either of them, Varys had agreed on the condition that Jaime owed him a favor just as big in the future whenever Varys had need of him. Jaime had agreed without hesitation, and they had shaken hands on it. A few days later, the deed had been done, and Jaime had listened in on his sister’s conversations.

 

The first week had been dull business, and so had the second week and the third week after that. All his sister had talked about for three weeks straight was either the move or her deadbeat husband and his ridiculous family. Her conversations had occasionally turned to other topics that weighed on Jaime’s eyelids and sent him into short, fitful naps. Eventually, Jaime had surmised that Cersei must have been using her cell phone for important calls and her house phone for everything but. Varys had not been able to tap her cell phone, though he hadn’t told Jaime why.

 

However, it had been in the fourth week of listening in on her conversations that a call came out of the blue and answered all of his fears.

 

“Miss Lannister,” the voice had greeted curtly through the phone line—a man’s voice, deep with base, and unfamiliar to Jaime.

 

“Have you been able to track him?” Cersei had asked immediately, without even saying hello to the man, and that had drawn Jaime’s attention instantly. He had bolted upright in his seat, his fingers fumbling on the keyboard in front of him as he pushed himself up.

 

“Sometimes,” the voice had answered. “He has good bodyguards, though, and a tight crew. He knows how to avoid followers.”

 

“Have you seen Sandor Clegane near him?”

 

Jaime’s eyes had grown wide at such a question. He had drawn himself as still as possible, hands grasping on the edge of his desk, knuckles turning white with his grip.

 

“No,” had come the reply.

 

Cersei had cursed then. “He has to be involved. Him and his little bitch, the Stark girl. If we can’t get to them this way, then I want the girl. She’s the quickest route to breaking Sandor Clegane, and once we have him, we’ll have Renly. He won’t go down for him. He’ll give him up in a heartbeat to save her skin.”

 

Jaime had wasted no time. He had called the police and asked Varys to send out a car to patrol Winterfell Avenue for the night. After that night, Jaime had gone out to Winterfell Avenue himself to watch Sansa’s house from the farthest curb. It was the only way he knew to protect her. The last person he trusted now was his sister. He had heard it in her voice, after all. She wasn’t lying. If she couldn’t get what she wanted through Sandor or Renly, then she was going to use Sansa to do it.

 

He didn’t know exactly what Cersei expected to accomplish with this. He didn’t know why she was after Renly and Sandor of all people or why she felt the need to target Sansa Stark to get to them, but it stirred up all of his talks with Brienne from before. Brienne had suggested that maybe Renly was someone important in the underground scene, and it wasn’t so far out of the realm of possibility. After Sandor’s rescue of Sansa at the abandoned warehouse on River Row Way, Jaime had given up all ambitions against Sandor and had forgotten all about Renly.

 

After all, Renly’s boyfriend, Loras Tyrell, had died that night. He had been shot in cold blood, and the reports were Renly was at the hospital to visit the morgue as soon as he had gotten wind of the news. Jaime had shown up for the funeral, and whatever plots or ideas he had once brewing in his head about Renly, he had given them all up after seeing the man’s face at the funeral and listening to his eulogy for Loras Tyrell.

 

 _This was a man in mourning_ , he had thought, _a man like me_.

 

If Renly was competition for Cersei, then it wasn’t news to Jaime. Maybe Renly wasn’t as clean as they had once thought he was, but Jaime wasn’t going to ruin the life of a man in mourning. As long as Renly Baratheon managed to stay off the worst of the radar, then Jaime would let sleeping dogs lie out of respect.

 

However, Renly had done something to get Cersei’s attention.

 

It wasn’t good attention either, not when it involved using Sandor Clegane to get to Renly Baratheon by means of Sansa Stark.

 

Jaime drew another slow drag from his cigarette, gazing at Sansa’s house as the last of the rays disappeared beyond the horizon tinged with hot pink and violent streaks of deep purple. Beyond those colors, the sky was a dark blue lit with tiny patches of silver stars. Jaime glanced up briefly to get a good look at it. It was a beautiful night. It was a shame he couldn’t sit here and just enjoy it.

 

Bracing himself on his palms, he pushed himself up from the curb. He finished the last of his cigarette and chucked it, stomping out the burning embers with his boot. Jaime then stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets, and began his walk away from Winterfell Avenue.

 

Normally, he would have gone home, but something was nagging at the back of Jaime’s mind. He had been watching Sansa’s house for four days now since that overhead phone call, and Jaime knew he couldn’t just keep watching her house. He couldn’t keep calling a patrol out to Winterfell Avenue either in anticipation for something to happen. He knew what he had to do, and he didn’t want to get Brienne involved with it. She deserved better than that. Besides, Brienne still had a career, and Jaime had nothing.

 

He was a criminal. Jaime had realized it in his stint at the hospital with everyone after the whole ordeal at the warehouse. He had needed to come to terms with the realization before he could move forward with his life. He was on the same level as Sandor Clegane now, and it had taken some getting used to. He wasn’t a police officer anymore. He wasn’t the smiling golden liar hiding behind a shiny badge that allowed him to break the law in bigger ways than even Clegane could dream of.

 

In that case, Jaime had also realized, he needed to stop acting like an officer.

 

He wasn’t here to arrest someone.

 

He was _one_ of them, and it occurred to Jaime that maybe it was time he acted like it.

 

His feet guided him beneath the orange glow of lampposts down the brightly lit streets. At some point, he found himself in the parking lot of Clegane’s Keep, the yellow light pouring out from the windows across the windshields of the cars. A man bustled out of the front door just as Jaime came up, stumbling through two cars and across the lot to his own. Jaime recognized him instantly. There wasn’t a bottle in his hand, but he was piss drunk and in no state to drive. And yet he was headed straight for his car.

 

Jaime’s feet kicked in before his mind. Sandor yanked open the driver side door, falling sideways into the seat as Jaime reached the vehicle and put his hand on the roof.

 

“Hey, you don’t want to do that,” Jaime said, looking down at Sandor.

 

Normally, the other man would have been taller than him, but in this case, with Sandor sprawled out in the front seat of his car and Jaime standing up outside of it, it was the other way around.

 

Sandor’s eyes initially grew wide at the sight of Jaime as if he was in shock to see him there. Not a moment later, he narrowed them to show his aggravation as a scowl overtook his features.

 

“Get away from me, _Lannister_ ,” Sandor spat, his speech slurring somewhat as he _shooed_ his hand at Jaime. “Don’t you have better things to do?”

 

“You’re drunk,” Jaime stated as bluntly as possible. “You can’t drive.”

 

“ _Watch_ me.”

 

“No,” Jaime insisted, “I’m not going to _watch_ you.” Jaime then did the only thing he knew to do in a situation like this. “Move over,” he said.

 

Sandor actually froze at that. Very slowly, he swiveled his head around to squint bloodshot eyes at Jaime. “ . . . What?”

 

“I said,” Jaime repeated in a firmer voice, gesturing at the empty passenger seat with his hand that wasn’t holding onto the roof of Sandor’s car, “move _over_.”

 

“ . . . What for?” Sandor asked next, sounding dumbfounded at the direction of the conversation.

 

“Oh, for heaven’s sake—”

 

Jaime took a gamble, and shoved Sandor over into the next seat. Sandor tumbled into it, having already been halfway over the armrest and loose from the alcohol. Jaime heard a loud _thunk_ as Sandor hit something on the car door, probably his shoulder, and swore aloud. Jaime slid into the driver seat, though, and held out his hand. “Keys,” he said.

 

Sandor righted himself, glaring at Jaime. “What do you think you’re doing?”

 

“Driving you home,” Jaime replied.

 

They stared at each other for a long moment in silence. Jaime couldn’t make out what was going on in Sandor’s head through his guarded expression, but Sandor finally turned away from him and dug into one of his coat pockets. He pulled out a set of keys, practically slapping them down into Jaime’s hand. The slap stung with sharp metal against his palm, but Jaime took them without a word. There were no more replies, though. Nothing more was said.

 

Jaime knew the way to Sandor’s apartment, so he drove them there by obeying all of the traffic laws along the way. He stopped at every stop sign and red light, drove at the speed limit, and before Jaime knew it, he had pulled into an empty parking space underneath the looming shadow of Sandor’s building. It blotted out the sky above, creating near blackness within the car.

 

Sandor shoved open the door, stumbling out of the vehicle without even asking for his keys back. Jaime figured he ought to see him up to his apartment, too. He might as well make sure Sandor didn’t trip and fall and break his neck along the way.

 

Luckily, Sandor took the elevator. Jaime decided to be less obvious, and he took the stairs. When he reached Sandor’s floor and turned around the corner, he saw the other man banging his fist on his own door.

 

“Damn it all!” swore Sandor, slamming his fist a second time against the locked barrier.

 

Jaime raised his eyebrows as well as Sandor’s set of keys, jangling them together. “Were you looking for these?” he inquired.

 

Sandor’s glare was enough to make Jaime consider taking a step back, but he did the exact opposite and took a step forward.

 

“Why aren’t you _gone_ yet?”

 

“Well, if I was gone,” Jaime surmised, “you’d be locked out of your flat without these.” He shook the keys one more time, and crossed the distance to unlock the door. The lock gave away with a _click_ , and Jaime easily pushed it open. “There,” he added. “You can’t be too upset to still see me here.”

 

Sandor’s glare did not subside, and he rammed his shoulder into the door like a bull to get inside. Jaime frowned as he watched Sandor storm into his apartment. He had thought the worst of their disagreements were finally over and resolved ever since they had all survived the showdown at the warehouse, but perhaps he had been wrong about that after all.

 

Jaime followed him inside, ignoring the fact that it might have been a bad idea, and shut the door behind with a quiet push. It was dark within the apartment, with only a soft moonlight pouring in through the parted curtains, until Sandor flicked on a sudden light from the kitchen to flood the area. Jaime temporarily shielded his eyes against it. They were used to the dark ever since the sun had set that evening.

 

He knew why he was staying, but it struck him that Sandor was clearly a man in distress. From the messes strewn across the tables and floors to the glimpse of his unkempt bedroom in the hallway beyond, Sandor was going through something that it appeared no one had been helping him with. Or, more likely, that Sandor would not allow anyone to help him with.

 

But Jaime caught the sign of heartbreak written all over Sandor’s apartment like fresh paint.

 

He glimpsed the bare walls, the mess of newspapers, the dusty curtains, and the floor before his feet filled with clutter. Jaime lifted his gaze to the unclean kitchen where Sandor now stood, bent over the counter with the balance of a staggering, drunk man, and he wondered how long she had been gone. It seemed like it was only yesterday that he had become okay with the idea of them two together, and now he was looking at a whole other reality.

 

It was much the same with his sister.

 

“Sansa’s in danger,” Jaime blurted out, saying it with such calm ease. There was no urgency to his voice, none of the yelling he suspected he might have to do on the way here. Sandor lifted his head, turning around slowly to face him. He was standing at the sink, drinking haphazardly from the pouring faucet that still ran.

 

“ . . . What?” Sandor’s voice grated through the silence like the rough sound of rock scraping against rock.

 

“She’s in danger,” Jaime repeated, staring Sandor down. “My sister, Cersei. She wants Sansa Stark to get to you. I tapped her phone line, so I could listen to her private conversations. She mentioned it a few days ago. I’ve been watching Sansa Stark’s house ever since.”

 

There was silence throughout the apartment, save for the running water from the faucet. Sandor stared Jaime down across the distance, shadow falling on his face from the light above his head over the sink. It crowned his head in a strange sort of halo. Finally, clamping his hand down on the faucet handle, the water stopped running, and all sound ceased.

 

Sandor stumbled away from the counter, guiding his way out of the kitchen by holding onto the ledges nearest to him. He staggered through the living room to Jaime, grasping hard onto Jaime’s shoulder when he reached him to regain his balance. Jaime instinctively leaned back, steeling his legs to hold the weight of them both.

 

“And you’re telling me this when she’s _your_ sister?” Sandor spat.

 

Jaime grabbed the top of Sandor’s hand against his shoulder, gripping it tightly in hopes of getting through to him. “It’s amazing,” he said, “the things you can do when the people you loved and trusted the most have been lying to you your whole life.”

 

Sandor laughed, a short, barking laugh, and wrenched his arm away from Jaime. Jaime watched him stagger again and fall to the couch, landing almost perfectly in a lying position on his side by pure luck alone.

 

“You did help Renly, didn’t you?” Jaime asked, feeling bold enough to ask. He had been wondering about it ever since that night in the club. Everything added up. If Sandor had been working for Renly, it opened up a well of possibilities.

 

Sandor laughed again. It was a low, callous sound this time, the sound of a man who knew something you didn’t and drew amusement from it. He said nothing.

 

“That’s why Cersei’s after her,” Jaime continued, slowly pacing around the short table in front of the couch. “Because you worked for Renly, and she wants to get to Renly, and with Loras Tyrell dead, that only leaves you. You must’ve been in his innermost circle once, though you seem to have fallen out of grace. But Sansa, she’s an innocent. She doesn’t deserve this, and she certainly doesn’t deserve my sister’s attentions of all people on her.”

 

The laughing was gone, and the air around them had grown tense. “I did what I had to do to keep her safe,” Sandor rasped from below. “Cersei won’t touch her now.”

 

“Well, whatever you did, it wasn’t enough,” Jaime threw back. “Because Cersei still wants Sansa Stark—”

 

“Bullshit.”

 

“Bullshit!” Jaime hollered back, losing his control at last. “I heard it with my own two ears! She’s going after Sansa, and I can’t hold her off on my own by sitting out on a street corner like some vigilante after hours!”

 

“Then _don’t!_ ”

 

“No,” Jaime whispered, “I won’t leave her to the vultures.”

 

“You’re just here,” Sandor stated lazily, pushing himself up from the couch with one elbow against the cushion, “because you’re spying for your sister, yeah? You wouldn’t turn your colors so fast—”

 

Jaime climbed over the coffee table and grabbed Sandor by the collar of his shirt, slinging a punch straight into the other man’s face. Sandor was strong despite his drunkenness, though, and grasped the front of Jaime’s jacket to shove him hard. Jaime flew back, landing on the glass and breaking it as he fell through piles of newspapers on top, shattering the table. He could barely move before Sandor had grasped his jacket again and dragged him upward onto his feet. Instead of punching him, Sandor roared and bashed his forehead against Jaime’s face.

 

Jaime’s vision soared white for a second, then black, as the sound of crunching bone filled his head. He felt the pouring blood from his nose, and Sandor’s hand wrapped up around his chin. Jaime swayed on his feet, held up only by Sandor’s hands.

 

He heard a dull laugh, barely realizing it was his own. “What did you do, hmm, that you thought was such a great plan to ward off my sister?”

 

Sandor’s teeth gleamed in the low moonlight, but whether he was gritting them or smiling at him, Jaime could not tell. “I held a knife to her throat,” he grated out, “and told her to sing a pretty little song for me, _Lannister_.”

 

The shock was a dull drum in his ears. All other sound went out, and Jaime tried to imagine Sandor lording over Sansa with the sharp point of a knife poised at Sansa’s throat, gleaming in the dark like his teeth, but the image seemed just as ludicrous now as it had after the revelation of Gregor Clegane’s involvement in her kidnapping. There were some things that Jaime could imagine, but this was not one of them.

 

Finding strength in himself that he didn’t know he possessed, he shoved back at Sandor and caused the other man to lose his balance as well as his grip on him. A strategically placed foot behind Sandor’s ankle, and Jaime tripped the man next. Sandor fell like a toppling statue, cracking his face on the wooden frame of the broken table. Jaime grabbed him from the back of his shirt collar and wrenched him up, knocking his face into it again.

 

Jaime threw Sandor onto his back, landing blow after blow into him until there was no more fighting back. Eventually, his hand tired, and he fell back, raising it up and holding it tightly to his chest. His knuckles were sore, and he wouldn’t be surprised if they were bleeding.

 

Sandor was laughing again, rough and harsh, until Jaime realized it wasn’t even laughter that he was hearing.

 

It was crying.

 

“I deserved that,” he rasped, and Jaime heard the crackle of broken glass shards. “Go on, Jaime, do it again. Beat me bloody and throw me to the lions. Fitting end, don’t you think?”

 

“Do you fucking have a death wish, you goddamn prick?” Jaime stumbled to his feet, wiping away the blood from his mouth that had spilled down from his nose. It was still warm to the touch. “I can’t fucking _believe_ you . . . ”

 

“Believe it,” Sandor rasped. “It’s the only honesty you’ll be getting from me.”

 

Jaime tilted his head back, lightly pinching his nose. It was broken. He popped it back into place, growling against the pain. “You’re drunk, and you’re an asshole on top of that,” Jaime told him. “Sober up, and we’ll deal with this later. In the morning, preferably.”

 

More glass crunched under Sandor’s body as he pushed himself up. He wobbled in the dark, and Jaime wondered how badly he had beaten him. That confession hadn’t inspired much mercy. “The fuck do you mean?” he asked, sounding more confused than anything.

 

“Oh,” Jaime threw at him a little carelessly, “do you still think I’m on my sister’s side? Well, prepare to be disappointed, Clegane. Cersei isn’t going to get away with my father got away with for years. Once was enough. I won’t let it happen twice in my lifetime if I can help it.”

 

“ . . . Why?” Sandor asked him this time, and his voice gave Jaime pause.

 

Jaime turned around to face him. “Because I’ve seen enough,” he said quietly. He raised his arms out on either side of him. “My family has nearly burned this city to the ground.” He dropped his arms. “It’s time it stopped.”

 

Jaime couldn’t see Sandor’s face in the darkness, just the silhouette of his frame and messy hair cast from behind with a soft glow from the open window filled with silver moonlight. “And what do you plan on doing about it?”

 

“We’re going to stop her,” Jaime said with finality. “That’s what I plan on doing about it.”

 

 


	109. The Beat of the Drum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author's Note #1:** Since all of the other characters' descriptions are built on actors and actresses, I wanted to keep up that theme. As a result of that, I had to mentally cast two of the book characters who haven't been cast in the television show yet and are going to play some pretty prominent parts in the story from here on out (as well as a third character, who'll mostly be in the background). For Edric Storm, I've chosen Aneurin Barnard. For Arianne Martell, I've chosen Inma Cuesta. As for Doran Martell, when he makes an appearance later on, I'll go with the ever fan favorite choice of Alexander Siddig. Here they are in order left to right, Edric, Arianne, and Doran:
> 
>   
> [](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/ranaeressea/Photos/aneurin-barnard.png) [](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/ranaeressea/Photos/inmacuesta.png) [](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/ranaeressea/Photos/alexandersiddig.jpg) []()  
> 
> 
>   
> 

_* * *_

 

Sansa raised her eyes higher and higher to gaze at the towering walls of granite stone as she drew closer to the gate. Under the overcast sky, they seemed darker than she last remembered them. There was no sunlight to pick out the specks of sparkling rock, though. A little light fell upon them, but the walls of the towers before her were as dark as stormy clouds, so were their adjoining walls topped with blunt parapets. It looked more like a castle than a college, but it was one of the oldest colleges in Kingsland and had been there since the founding of the city many, many years ago.

 

As she passed through the front gate, each side was adorned with two enormous green sphinx statues. Upon closer inspection, Sansa saw that they were made out of green marble instead of plain metal or stone, and their crouching figures were laced all throughout with intricate white veins. Sansa continued forward into an open courtyard with a small fountain in the center, flowering with a quiet, steady stream of water, and surrounded on all four sides with roofed corridors. Pausing, she opened up the map in her hands and glanced down at it to figure out which direction to go next in order to find the offices.

 

“Need some help?” a voice spoke too close beside her, and Sansa nearly dropped the map in her hands as she jolted from the sudden sound.

 

Looking up, she recognized the boy immediately. He had leaned away from her slightly, looking confused at her startled reaction. His ruffled black hair and deep blue eyes reminded her of every picture of his father that she had seen from her own father’s collection of photos from when the two of them were younger. His name was Edric Storm, and he was Robert Baratheon’s son.

 

He had a different mother than the other three children, but Sansa couldn’t recall her name. Edric had helped her with her flat tire months ago when he was riding with his uncle, Stannis. Aside from knowing he was Robert Baratheon’s son, she realized that she didn’t know much else about him. Edric didn’t spend time with his half-siblings, Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen, so outside of a few family get-togethers, Sansa never saw him around their family. Edric was an enigma on the sidelines, and she knew his name better than his face.

 

Sansa couldn’t think of why he was here either, so she shook her head clear of its extraneous thoughts and tried to focus on what to say next.

 

“Um, yes, please,” she said, closing the map. Staring at him for a moment, Sansa finally remembered that Edric was only a year younger than Joffrey. “What are you doing here?” she blurted out against all courtesies. “I thought you were only seventeen.”

 

Scowling at her response, Edric took his hands out of his coat pockets. She took notice of his coat. It was a rich navy blue with a yellow zipper track.

 

“I graduated at the top of my class, I’ll have you know,” Edric replied crossly. “A _year_ ahead of everybody. They skipped me up a grade. I’ve been here for half a year. Started back in January, in fact. I skipped the fall semester because I wanted to travel around with my uncle.”

 

Sansa narrowed her eyes slightly. “You don’t speak very properly—”

 

“You don’t need to _speak_ properly,” he shot back at her. “You only have to _write_ it. And I don’t like to speak properly. Everyone thinks you’re some jumped-up prick when you talk too proper.”

 

“And I suppose you’re _not_.”

 

Edric’s scowl only deepened. “Do I look like my half-brother?”

 

Sansa faltered, casting her eyes to the ground. “No,” she admitted.

 

“Good,” he said quickly, passing by her as he began to walk, “because I hear you dated him for a year—”

 

Sansa hurried after him. In the distance she heard a rumble of thunder. It was as if the weather decided to take up Edric’s mood. “It wasn’t a _year_ —”

 

“God knows how you put up with that smarmy prick—”

 

Sansa stopped in the middle of the courtyard, feet firmly planted on the ground. She was angry, but she was also willing to smooth over this tumultuous meeting. “If I’ve offended you, then I apologize,” she called out, “but _please_ , do not bring my personal life into this.”

 

Edric stopped walking. He didn’t turn around straight away, but Sansa saw him lower his head. Somewhere along the way, he had stuffed his hands back into his coat pockets. It took him a moment to turn around, and when he did, it was only halfway.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice a little calmer now. “I heard about what happened to you. I suppose I ought to be . . . a bit nicer, all things considering.”

 

Sansa let out a sigh at his admission, crossing the short distance between them as she rolled up her map. Tiny droplets of water began to fall from the sky, pattering against the paper. “Please, I don’t need pity or sympathy or reminders. I would just like to receive some help, if you’re willing to give it.”

 

She stood there for a time, waiting on a response. When he at last turned around to face her, Edric had narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. After a short silence, he aimed a good nod her way. “All right,” he agreed. “Follow me, then. You want to go to the office, yeah?”

 

Sansa thought about it as the droplets began to fall harder. She could walk up to the office with him and speak to a professor or a headmaster, but in hindsight, it would be the boring way to discover a new school. Pursing her lips, she glanced down at her rolled up map. Silently, Sansa tucked it into her bag and looked up at him again.

 

“I’ve got a better idea,” Sansa said. “Will you show me around?”

 

For the first time since they had begun talking, she saw a small smile light up his face and make it warm and inviting. “Sure,” Edric answered her. “But you might want to get out of the rain.”

 

Just then, it began to fall down in a torrential pour.

 

Throwing her bag over her head and holding it there with both hands, Sansa ran from the courtyard to the sheltered corridor a few feet ahead, where Edric now stood under the roof. He laughed at her as she shook herself free of the water not soaked into her clothing. Placing her bag back on her arm, Sansa glanced up at him and managed a smile.

 

“Well,” she said, “now that I’m _completely_ soaked . . . an inside tour will do just fine.”

 

Edric raised his brow at her. “Well, maybe you ought to get back out there and wash off more thoroughly. I don’t think you’re _completely_ soaked just yet.”

 

Sansa glanced down at herself. “I happen to think I _am_.”

 

“I happen to see that you’re not.”

 

Sansa raised her narrowed eyes to him. “You’re cheeky.”

 

Edric shrugged. “I hear that a lot.” Turning away from her, he walked ahead at a leisurely pace. “As your tour guide,” he announced, “I must warn you that the floors get a bit slippery when wet, so you might want to—”

 

Sansa gave out an unladylike squeal as her shoes slipped on the stones, reaching out just in time to grab a hold of the thin pillars that curved along the courtyard’s railing. Looking down, she noticed a thick mat not far from the opening. Sighing, she placed her feet on it and dragged them until they stopped squeaking. Sansa refused to meet Edric’s gaze, since he was probably laughing at her silently, and let go of the pillar to follow him further into the college’s structure.

 

Once they got out of the rain, the sound of the storm outside was muffled within the building itself. The hallway at first was small until it opened into a larger hall that connected with a wide foyer. Sansa’s eyes careened upwards. The roof was two-stories tall, the walls lined top to bottom with large windows. Beyond them, she could see the dark clouds above as a lash of lightning tore a rent through the sky. It lit up the rainfall with a blinding brilliance.

 

She removed her eyes from the windows to look ahead at Edric. He was leading the way a few feet ahead of her, unaware of the distance between them.

 

“Do you like it here?” Sansa finally asked him, breaking the silence. “Is it a good school?”

 

“Oh yeah, it’s great,” he replied without looking back. “They’ve got everything you could want, and _amazing_ extracurricular activities that count as well. You can take anything from archery to fencing on top of your regular studies. Plus, it’s a small private university, so you get better focus in smaller classrooms. And the teachers are great, too.”

 

“Sounds perfect.”

 

“It’s a great choice, if that’s what you’re asking,” Edric responded. “Nothing like Hightower University, which is another plus if you ask me.” He paused in the middle of the great hall and walked up to one of the windows, pointing across a dark green field of grass to another towering building. Sansa could see the short halls that connected them on either side. “That’s the recreational wing.”

 

“Do you spend a lot of your time there?” Sansa asked, genuinely curious.

 

Edric shrugged. “Sometimes,” he said. “It’s a great place to let off steam. They’ve even got a pool. It’s for the swim program, but everyone else uses it when they’re not.”

 

“What are you studying?”

 

“Officially, political science,” he told her, though he sounded very unenthusiastic about it. “Between you and me, I’m here for the rugby scholarship.”

 

Sansa perked up at this information. “You play sports?” she inquired.

 

“Sports are the only things I like.” He turned to look at her at last. “I study, but it gets boring. I can figure everything out before it becomes a challenge. Politicians are liars, anyway, and my father tells me I’m too blunt for that.”

 

“You are,” Sansa agreed.

 

Edric regarded her briefly, and then he continued to lead the way. She followed him out of the large hall, turning left into a long hallway like a tunnel that sloped downwards over the landscape. Sansa could feel gravity pulling them down.

 

“So,” Edric called back to her, looking over his shoulder this time, “what are you going into?”

 

“I haven’t figured that part out yet.”

 

“Well, that’s no good,” he said. “You’ve got to have a plan.”

 

“I don’t have a plan,” Sansa replied quietly. “Not yet, anyway.”

 

“You should probably take some time off,” Edric suggested in his loud voice. It carried through the hallway. Sansa could hear the echoes bouncing back. “Go on a trip like everyone else, you know. Take your mind off things.”

 

“It’s not that easy,” Sansa said, clutching the strap of her bag. “I can’t relax in my room. There’s no hope in me relaxing on the road.”

 

“Maybe you aren’t trying hard enough.”

 

Sansa glared at the back of his head. “Maybe I’ve tried it all.”

 

“Pretty sure you haven’t,” Edric replied easily.

 

“And who are _you_ to say?”

 

Edric finally looked over his shoulder again. They were almost at the end of the hall. He smirked in amusement before his face was lost to her again behind the back of his scraggly black hair. Sansa wondered if he was up to something until they came to the end of the hall, and he turned left again. Edric led her to a set of wide double doors, pushing on the long metal handle of one of them.

 

It opened into the recreational hall, a towering building that was as long as it was wide, and all of it was one connected room made of various courts. Sansa could see the pool in the distance, but on this end it was a sparring area and three other courts. A woman of short height but a curvy figure in tight sports gear was using the sparring floor by herself, slicing a blunted and ball-tipped blade through the air like it was a deadly weapon. She wore form-fitting yoga pants that were grey with a light pink waistline and a skintight tank top with a matching design. With clothes that fit her like a second skin, she moved unhampered by their weight. Sansa watched her, mesmerized by the movement.

 

Edric walked up to the edge of the court, clearing his throat to get her attention. The woman paused, blade up and still, and looked at him. Loosening her stance and her stern expression, she lowered her weapon and crossed the floor towards them. She looked familiar to Sansa, but Sansa couldn’t quite place where she had seen the woman before. She was short, but curvy and beautiful with long loose curls of dark hair, which she had left down even in training, and dark olive skin. She was covered in sweat, but she grinned as she approached Edric.

 

The lady scooped up a blunted training sword as she passed by a rack and tossed it to Edric. He caught it deftly as she whirled hers upright and cemented a stance across from him. “Show me what you’ve got,” she told Edric with a smile, eyes gleaming, as she aimed the tip of her sword in his direction.

 

While he looked out of place in his jeans and yellow-zippered navy coat, Edric slipped easily into a similar posture across from her. He was all seriousness, no grinning like the woman. Sansa thought he ought to at least take his coat off if he was to fight properly, but Edric left it on.

 

They stood there in stillness. Sansa drew in a breath and held it, eyes scanning back and forth, wondering which moment they would begin.

 

Edric struck out first, but the lady deftly avoided his blow, twirling on her bare feet like a ballet dancer. His arm drew back quickly, though his feet didn’t move as fast. He had upper body strength and control; his legs were another matter. A blade came singing sideways through the air—the woman’s blade. Edric jumped back to avoid it, cutting against it with his own to knock it aside. He looped his arm to try and yank her sword away from her, but he was unsuccessful. Her grip was tight, and she pulled back.

 

Edric parried a thrust from her blade, and then he took her quickly by surprise. Moving faster than her, his arm came back down and the tip of his sword caught on her shoulder. It was ball-tipped for safety, but the woman looked shocked at his apparent feat. Instead of calling out a roar of success, Edric acted quickly yet again. He came around her left and spun on his heel, catching another strike on the back of her tank top. Sansa gasped, though no one was hurt. They would’ve been shallow cuts, but a hindrance was still a hindrance in a dual.

 

The woman reacted quickly. Apparently, she was quite angry at his two hits. She struck out as he tried to pull away, swinging low and catching the back of his leg with her blade. Edric tripped, losing his whole balance. He fell flat on his back, hitting the court so hard that Sansa saw the dust rise around him. The woman positioned the tip of her blade at his throat, and he raised his hands in surrender.

 

“You should work on your footing,” the woman told him, lowering her blade. As she turned around, Edric reached for his blade and cut at her ankle. She tripped and fell in turn, and he didn’t try to stand. Taking his ‘wounded’ leg into account as a fair player, Edric knelt beside her. He pressed the ball-tip of his blade against her throat.

 

“You taught me never to turn my back on my opponent,” he said without raising his sword. From the ground, the woman grinned in satisfaction.

 

“Good,” she replied, placing the side of her hand on the blunt blade. She pushed it away. “Something I said got through that thick skull of yours.”

 

The woman rose to her feet, and Edric followed suit. Together, they placed their training swords on the rack at the edge of the court. Edric, though much younger than the woman, was definitely a lot taller than her. She raised her eyes to Sansa as she approached her.

 

“And who is this lovely girl you bring with you,” the lady asked as she paused in front of Sansa, glancing over at Edric. “Showing off?”

 

Sansa glanced over at Edric. His cheeks were flushed red, whether from the fight or the comment, she couldn’t tell. “No,” he said obstinately. “She’s looking for a school, and I was showing her around. Thought she ought to meet you first.”

 

She raised her chin to meet Sansa’s eyes. There was a noticeable height difference between them. Sansa was much taller than her, too. Just then, the woman’s eyes lit up with recognition, and she cast her gaze down Sansa’s body and back up to her face.

 

“We’ve met before, I think,” the woman said. “I recognize your face.”

 

“Sansa,” she introduced herself quickly, extending her hand. “Sansa Stark.”

 

The woman took her hand, shaking it. She had a firm grip. The clasp of her hand felt familiar as well as her face. Sansa had looked down, her eyes locked on their clasped hands. It was strange, Sansa thought, how a touch could be familiar, like a face or a voice.

 

“Arianne,” the woman introduced herself, and Sansa looked up. Arianne had a coy smile like a woman with a secret—or a million and one. “Arianne Martell.”

 

Struck speechless, Sansa felt her eyes widen. She knew this woman. This was the same woman she had run into while she was out on a date with Sandor once. She was one of his past flings, though admittedly, Sansa had never learned the whole story behind that. Arianne, unaffected by the exchange of names, walked over to a water fountain to get something to drink. Sansa watched her go, her eyes glued to the back of Arianne’s head, until a shadow appeared beside her. Quickly, she turned to see Edric there. He was shucking off his coat, wiping his face with one of the sleeves.

 

“Miss Martell,” he said, sounding a little breathless, “is one of the best teachers here. She’s really young. Unorthodox, too, but she gets us. I think it’s because she is closer to our age. Her father, Doran Martell, he runs the place.”

 

 _Doran Martell_. That name was familiar to Sansa, too, but she couldn’t say where she had heard it from before. “It is a family run university?”

 

Edric made a face. “No,” he told her. “Headmaster Martell and Miss Arianne are the only ones who work here by the name of Martell.”

 

Sansa nodded her head as Arianne was walking back over to them. She looked at Edric and then to Sansa. Finally, Arianne tilted her head in a beckoning motion.

 

“Follow me,” she said to Sansa. “I will take you to my office.”

 

Arianne led the way this time, and Sansa followed her footsteps, glancing back to see Edric tossing his coat aside as he regarded the training blade held flat in both of his hands. The doors closed behind her, though, shutting off the image of him from view. He was a nice boy, and Sansa hoped to see him again, even if she did not choose to go to this college over the others in mind. She was going to have a thorough visit of them all before she made her final decision. Since it was such a big decision, she needed all the time she could get to make it.

 

Sansa focused her attention forward again to the hall ahead of her and the back of Arianne’s curly hair. It felt strange to be taller than the other woman, but she still felt overshadowed by her despite that. Arianne was skilled, older, beautiful, and very intelligent if she was a professor at this young of an age. Judging by her appearances, she couldn’t have yet been thirty.

 

If Doran Martell ran the institution, though, perhaps he bent the rules for her. It was possible, but even Sansa felt the surety of her expression suddenly falter at such a thought. No, Miss Martell didn’t seem like the type to accept charity. She exuded willfulness and a headstrong quality just in the way she fought against Edric in the sparring court. She had earned her position here, no matter how she was related to Headmaster Doran Martell.

 

Their journey was made in silence, though it didn’t take long to get to Arianne’s office. Through a few corridors, they at last arrived in a lounge area with various smaller hallways connected to it. Arianne made for the second hallway, and then headed straight for the fourth door on the left. She opened the door and walked inside, and Sansa stepped in behind her.

 

The walls outside of the office were bare, but the window itself was covered with photographs of her with fellow teachers and students. Sansa only had a second to glimpse them before Arianne called out to her, “You may close the door.”

 

Sansa followed her instruction and turned her attention to the inside of the office. It was tidy and colorful with a stained glass Tiffany lamp on the desk, a myriad of photos laid across the walls next to awards and degrees, and a bookshelf to the right that was loaded with not only books but unique figurines.

 

Arianne had taken a seat behind her desk. She gestured at one of the two empty chairs in front of it.

 

“Have a seat,” she suggested, and Sansa chose the chair closest to the door. “So,” Arianne then added with a smile, leaning forward onto her desk and folding her hands together. “Edric said you’re interested in attending our quaint university. What about it caught your attention?”

 

“It’s smaller, quieter,” Sansa admitted, “and it has a very good reputation. I was looking for someplace the opposite of Hightower.”

 

Arianne’s smile grew. “Well, we are the opposite of Hightower University, if that is what you’re looking for, but I have a feeling you have more than those reasons for seeking us out today.”

 

“Truth be told, I’m trying to avoid someone.”

 

It felt strange to be able to admit that so easily to Arianne. Recognizing her from that restaurant ages ago still made Sansa uncomfortable as well, but Arianne was no Joffrey. Sansa’s hands twisted in her lap, but she kept them out of sight.

 

Arianne raised her eyebrows. “Not a good reason to pick a college,” she told her, “but it does help with focus to not have distractions _and_ at least you have other reasons.”

 

“Edric has a very high opinion of you.”

 

Arianne’s expression, which seemed slightly secretive and closed off behind her warm eyes, softened at his name. “He’s a very special boy. Stubborn but strong. Impetuous but wise. He just needed the right environment to grow. Something everyone needs, but they don’t always find.” Relaxing her hands upon the desk, she gazed at Sansa with an imploring look. “That is what we offer here, Sansa. We not only teach our students. We help them find their way. It’s very important to us here at Oldtown University. Are you looking for yourself, Sansa, or have you already found her?”

 

Sansa was speechless as she mulled over the question. As of lately, she felt lost. In a month she would be graduating. Her friends would all be either taking trips before settling down to a school commitment or studiously planning for college, and she would have to do the same. Many of them had goals already set, and the more she thought about it, she realized she had lost her vision and her way. In the midst of everything that had happened to her and her family, all she wanted was safety. All she dreamed of was comfort and peace, a calm to placate the turbulence brought into her life, and before it, everything else had fled.

 

Once, when asked, Sansa could have admitted straight away what she wanted to do with her life. Now, it all felt like a blank slate, waiting to be written upon.

 

“We all control our own fate,” Arianne announced in a soft voice, reaching out to Sansa past the noise in her head. “Without that, we’re nothing.”

 

Sansa felt her bottom lip trembling. She bit into it to stop it. All of the discomfort she felt around Arianne was dissipating. After all, Sandor was no longer a part of her life, was he? It hardly mattered anymore. _None of it matters_ , she thought with a taste of bitterness on the back of her tongue, but it still hurt, so somehow it still mattered to her.

 

“And you can help me do that?” Sansa asked. “Control my own fate? Become my own person again?”

 

Arianne reached across the desk with both of her hands, fingers outstretched and palms upward. Looking down at the hands in front of her, Sansa realized what Arianne was offering her. Sansa took the hands into her own, grasping on tight. Margaery, who had been mourning the death of her brother, had no time for Sansa’s grief on top of her own. Jeyne was sympathetic and sweet, but she just didn’t understand. Arya, though once close to Sansa, was going through her own troubles, visiting counselors and talking mostly in quiet voices with Jon over the phone. Gendry spent all of his focus on Arya. Loras was gone. Sandor, whatever his misguided reasons, had threatened her life and then disappeared from it. Catelyn and Ned, loving parents though they were, couldn’t understand what she was going through either.

 

As of late, Sansa had felt all alone. Until Arianne reached out her hands to hers.

 

Sansa raised her eyes to Arianne’s gaze, feeling a sting of hot tears at the back of them. The warmth that had been in Arianne’s brown eyes as she spoke of Edric returned to them now, and her expression had softened considerably.

 

“Yes,” Arianne answered her firmly, returning Sansa’s tight grasp. “I can help you find your way.”

 

 


	110. Trouble on the Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Note:** At the end of this chapter, I’ve included a list of songs so far whose lyrics inspired the chapter names, covering Chapter 100 through Chapter 110.

_* * *_

 

_Before Arya could think of what to do next, a pair of arms snatched her sides from behind and hoisted her up from the floor._

_“You thought you were_ so _fucking smart,” Ramsay hissed in her ear. “Well, guess what—”_

_Arya didn’t have to guess what because she gripped the knife hard in her hand and swung the pointed tip of the blade right into Ramsay Bolton’s side._

_His inhuman screech filled the room, and he let go of her. Arya yanked the knife out, taking it with her this time, and she ran left, but Ramsay reached out and snatched her arm. Arya turned around and kicked at him, causing him to let go of her, and then she jumped onto the bed because it was the nearest thing to give her leverage against him. Ramsay came after her, climbing onto the bed arms first, and Arya took the opportunity to jump onto his back, wrapping one arm firmly around his neck to cut off his air supply as she raised the other one into the air and brought it down suddenly right into his back._

_Arya wasn’t sure how many times she stabbed him. She kept stabbing him even after he stopped shrieking. She kept stabbing him even after they sunk down to the floor together. She kept stabbing him even when there were tears blurring her vision, and she kept stabbing him even when her chest shook with loud sobs after everything she had been through because of this monster—_

_She only stopped when a hand laid itself on her arm, gripping hard._

_“Enough,” Sandor rasped. “He’s dead . . . ”_

When Arya opened her eyes, she wasn’t in Ramsay Bolton’s cabin anymore. She was in her bedroom at home, surrounded by deep green walls and a messy floor strewn with all sorts of things—half of them she couldn’t identify herself—and action figure setups all over her computer desk. She also had a few school books lying haphazardly across the floor, wide open and the pages dog-eared as if she even knew why she had marked those pages in the first place. Arya blinked her eyes, and then she lifted her hands up in front of her as she glanced forward at her open palms.

 

For the millionth time in a row, Arya expected to still see the blood. Sometimes there was no blood, but she saw it anyway. She wasn’t sure what it meant. Arya hadn’t been to the see the counselor like she was supposed to have been doing. Instead, she chose to skip out on those sessions. Her parents had insisted to take her themselves at first, but Arya had lied to them and said Jon would take her, which he would have if only she had actually _asked_ him. Arya hadn’t asked Jon, though. Ned and Catelyn hadn’t picked up that anything was out of the ordinary either.

 

The psychiatrist likely thought they had chosen to go elsewhere, while Catelyn and Ned hadn’t bothered to give Jon a call to ask him if he had been running his little sister to her psych sessions. After all, if anyone in this family was reliable, it was Jon. He was the picturesque teenage son, even if he had come from an affair. He didn’t get into trouble. He also didn’t drink or party like his older brothers, Robb and Theon. If they could rely on anyone, it was Jon. Arya had planned that out perfectly. She wasn’t without her wits. If she had picked Robb or Theon, her parents would have found out in a heartbeat, and then she would have had no choice but to go.

 

To put it plainly, Arya didn’t want to go.

 

Not only was it a waste of her time, but it was a waste of her parents’ money. As long as she didn’t show up for any of the counseling sessions aside from that first consultation, then her parents didn’t have to spend their hard earned money to pay for an issue that a psychiatrist couldn’t fix. She could fix the problem herself. The money they had paid up front would be refunded to them, like the woman had informed them, if Arya only showed up for the initial consultation and not any of the following sessions. It was some policy about first timers. There were finer details to it, but Arya didn’t remember all of them. Still, she knew she was doing her parents a favor by not going.

 

Putting her three older brothers into college had burned a hole into their parents’ pockets. There probably weren’t any funds for her, Sansa, Bran, or Rickon to go without student loans, full scholarships, or grants to pay for their individual ways. There was reason Sansa was eighteen and still didn’t have her own car yet. Arya was sixteen going on seventeen, and she didn’t have one either. How were they supposed to pay for these psych visits? Wrinkling her nose at the thought, Arya flexed her fingers. In fact, the only downside to her plan was eventually her parents would realize a bill hadn’t come in the mail. After that, they might make an inquiry or a phone call that would lead to her being found out, but until then, she had time to sort things out on her own.

 

The counseling sessions simply weren’t worth it. Some shrewd old lady with a doctorate degree in asking people “ _And how does that make you feel?_ ” wasn’t going to help Arya understand something that she couldn’t learn to understand on her own somehow, and if she could learn to understand it on her own, then what did she need with a psychiatrist in the first place? She wasn’t some helpless little girl. Arya could find a way to figure things for herself, and she didn’t need someone else to tell her how to do it.

 

It would just take time. It wasn’t something that was going to happen overnight.

 

Arya stared at her hand. She flexed her fingers in front of herself again, blinking as she watched the joints bend and then straighten out. There was still no sight of blood upon them, but her hands felt uncommonly warm as if they were covered with it.

 

The most disconcerting thing that Arya could remember of that night was how it had felt to have Ramsay’s blood all over her hands, running in rivulets through her fingers. It was terrifying and yet comforting at the same time, knowing what she had done, feeling powerful, feeling _safe_. She could remember how warm her hands had been, covered in that slick dark fluid, so dark it was almost black. Ramsay’s blood had been black. If she thought about it hard enough, she could picture the color. She could remember it. It couldn’t have been any other color. It certainly wasn’t red. Red was the color of normal blood, but Ramsay hadn’t been normal. His soul had been black, and so his blood had been black, too. Ramsay hadn’t been a person. He had been a monster.

 

So, what did that make her for killing him?

 

Arya lowered her hands to her lap, lifting her eyes once more to look around her room. She didn’t have the answer for that question either. Ramsay was dead, and she was alive, but his presence still haunted her sometimes when she closed her eyes. Arya couldn’t escape him. She didn’t know if she ever would. She had been trapped in his cabin for maybe a week, but it felt like he would be trapped in her mind forever.

 

What would it feel like, she thought, to have the voice of a serial killer always in her thoughts?

 

Arya closed her eyes as she sat there on her bed. Her sweater hung low on her arms, reaching past her wrists whenever she lowered her hands down. It wasn’t even her sweater. It was probably one of Jon’s or Theon’s old sweaters, but Arya liked wearing things that were too big for her, anyway. She had nicked it from the washroom yesterday when she looked through her closet and couldn’t find a sweater of her own that she wanted to wear for the day. It was a faded and worn navy blue, but it was so faded that it looked patchy and grey.

 

She wore it yesterday, and she was wearing it today. Nobody cared, though. She was Arya. If she wanted to wear the same thing twice in row, nobody was going to say anything about it. They were only going to say something if it was Sansa because Sansa didn’t do things like that.

 

Arya wondered where Sansa was right now. She wasn’t home, and Arya knew where else she wasn’t at either.

 

She definitely wasn’t with Sandor.

 

Thinking about that only made her angry and upset, though, so Arya pushed the thought from her mind.

 

Eventually, her thoughts drifted off into silence. Arya was still trying to work on clearing out her mind. Meditation couldn’t be that hard to master. All Arya had to do was turn off her thoughts. She breathed in deeply and placed her hands on her knees, and for all of three seconds, her mind was blank. Then, she wondered how many days she had been wearing this pair of pants in particular or the socks on her feet. She wiggled her toes and wrinkled her nose. Her socks were starting to smell. Arya wasn’t sure if she showered yesterday. No, she didn’t shower the other day. She had been too busy cleaning up in the backyard, and then she had just passed out on her bed last night without washing up.

 

That probably explained the dirt in her bed, Arya thought with a frown.

 

Suddenly, she realized she was thinking. Arya sighed in exasperation at herself and reopened her eyes. She was getting nowhere with this. It was ridiculous. She couldn’t turn off her thoughts because whenever she turned off her thoughts, she always started to remember again. It all would come back to her like it had done earlier when Arya had opened her eyes again to the sight of her room. For all of a minute or two, she had been back in the dank stench of Ramsay’s cabin, covered in blood, with one dead man on her right and one dying man on her left.

 

She wanted to close her eyes, clean her thoughts, and think of nothing. She didn’t want to return to the cabin again, but her mind kept taking her there. Arya was trying her hardest to make her mind forget, and yet it was harder than it looked on television and the internet. Arya had to wonder if people really could shut off their thoughts like the flick of a light switch.

 

Arya was also willing to bet no on that, even though she was attempting to do it herself.

 

Sighing more softly this time, Arya closed her eyes and tried one more time.

 

Though it was silent within her bedroom, she could hear the noises throughout the house echoing up to her through the walls and the floor below her feet. Arya could hear the television playing downstairs in the living room, blaring an action movie that Bran and Rickon were probably in the middle of watching together without adult supervision. _They won’t be children forever_ , Arya could hear her dad say in the background while Catelyn protested to subjecting them to such violent material.

 

There were birds chirruping just outside her window, singing a bright tune that reminded Arya of her sister and her love of singing. Sansa had a beautiful voice, but Sansa wasn’t here today and Sansa wasn’t in her room belting out a ballad to the newest boy band craze. Taking a deep breath and releasing it past her lips, Arya tried harder to focus her mind on tuning out all of the extra noise. At first, she could hear the washing machine as it rumbled downstairs, churning a large load. Before long, the rumble became a distant hum—and so did the explosions as well as the birds and their chirruping.

 

Eventually, Arya was left with a silent and peaceful hum between her ears, a soft echo of nothingness that filled up her mind to the brim with everything and with nothing all at once. Everything blurred together inside of Arya’s head until they became inseparable and unrecognizable, and she was left with the peaceful quiet that she had been trying to achieve for weeks without the help of a mentor to get her there.

 

It would be her proof to herself that she didn’t _need_ any counseling. She was just fine without it. If she could silence her thoughts without any help, then she could silence the presence of Ramsay’s voice inside of her head.

 

And right now, it was complete silence in her mind, a peaceful nothingness. The sight behind her eyes was a soft dark red cast, nearly black.

 

 _Nearly blood_ , Arya thought to herself.

 

_“You didn’t scream,” he said happily, and he leaned closer to Arya again, still grinning. “They always scream when I do that.”_

 

Her eyes flew open, but she was still inside of her room, at home, on Winterfell Avenue. Her heart was pounding hard against her ribcage, but she hadn’t done anything physical to warrant it. Quickly, Arya scrambled for her cell phone lying on the top of her bed covers, swiped her finger over the screen, and selected a familiar number from her list of contacts.

 

The phone only rang three times before it picked up.

 

“Hey,” Gendry said into the phone on the other end of the line. Arya took a deep breath, exhaling it heavily into the receiver. Gendry was quiet for a moment, and Arya realized she had been so relieved to hear his voice that she had forgotten to say hi back to him. “Are you all right?” Gendry asked slowly, his voice crackling through the line. He must have been driving for the signal to cut in and out like that.

 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Arya lied like she normally lied, which didn’t stop people from worrying about her, but it also didn’t stop her from lying either. “What’s up with you?” she asked him.

 

“I just got off of work,” Gendry told her. “Are you goofing off with your sister?”

 

“No,” Arya said, “she isn’t home today.”

 

“Where is she?”

 

“I have no idea, and I don’t care,” Arya said flatly, and Gendry snorted through the phone line.

 

“Point taken,” he replied, though he clearly wasn’t angry about it.

 

“Do you want to get something to eat together?” Arya asked before she forgot to. _It’s going to be my birthday soon_ , she thought, wanting to celebrate early. She also wanted to get out of this house for a while. She felt cooped up. “We could go to that diner on the corner of Long Sister and Little Sister.”

 

“Don’t you mean _Three_ Sisters?” Gendry asked with a sarcastic tone.

 

“Ugh,” Arya complained, “why does everyone call it that?”

 

“Because the old name is a mouthful.”

 

“It is not.”

 

“Is too,” Gendry shot back.

 

“The old name is so much cooler.”

 

“Your face is cooler,” Gendry told her.

 

The straight expression upon her face broke, crackling a slight smile in the corner of her mouth. “My face is awesome,” Arya agreed with him, her tone perking up. “You love looking at it.”

 

“No lie detected,” Gendry smarted back. “So, what time shall I pick you up, then, m’lady?”

 

Arya rolled her eyes, even though she knew he couldn’t see it through the phone. He would hear it in her voice. “Don’t call me that, and pick me up as soon as you leave that road to go to the next one that leads you straight to my house.”

 

“You give such amazing directions,” Gendry said.

 

“You know where my house is, nitwit,” Arya told him.

 

“Of course, I do,” Gendry said, pausing for a moment. “M’lady.”

 

Arya growled through the phone at him, hanging it up to the sound of Gendry’s loud laughter in the background.

 

Jumping off of her bed, she dropped the phone to the covers long enough to pull off her socks and cast them aside onto the messy floor. After that, she ran down the hallway into the bathroom. If she was going to leave the house today and go somewhere with Gendry, then she needed to at least take a five minute shower before she walked out of the front door to meet him.

 

Arya slammed the door behind herself, coming face to face with a pile of Sansa’s makeup strewn across the counter. She did share this bathroom with Sansa, after all. Arya eyed it all for a moment, and then she glanced up into the mirror at her own reflection. She stared at her bare face, the dark circles under her eyes that almost looked like bruises against her too pale skin. She glanced back down at the pile of makeup before her.

 

Arya thought about it, and then promptly dismissed the thought.

 

When she was washed and ready, she headed down the stairs in a hurry, flying past a confused Bran and Rickon as gunfire blared noisily from the action movie they were watching, and darted straight out of the front door into the lawn. The grass was wet from earlier rainfall, but the sun was bright in the sky. It hung low on the horizon, though, and the air was chilled. It was past six. Dinner would be ready soon, and then her parents might wonder where she had gone off to when she didn’t come down to eat with the family. In fact, they might panic.

 

She had a cell phone, though. They could call her.

 

The hood of Gendry’s car glinted under the sun’s rays, drawing Arya’s attention to his arrival. She hurried to the end of the lawn and onto the sidewalk, rocking impatiently from tiptoe to heel as he steadily drew nearer. As Gendry pulled up, Arya realized his free arm was thrown over the back of the passenger seat. His head was tilted forward as he smiled out at her.

 

Gendry held out his arm. “Your carriage awaits,” he said in deep voice, earning a raised eyebrow from Arya. Snorting, she hopped in beside him.

 

When they reached diner on the corner of Three Sisters, Arya walked in ahead of Gendry and selected a booth by the far wall. They sat down and ordered off the menu, and Gendry took longer than her. After the waitress took the menus back, Arya wanted to talk but found herself staring pointedly at the napkin and straw dispenser at the left end of the table by the wall. She began to play with the little plastic handle that dispensed the straws one at a time.

 

“What are you going to do with twenty straws?” Gendry suddenly asked. It had the desired affect of getting her attention without aggravating her, but Arya only looked up at him for a moment before she busied herself with the straws again.

 

“I’ve got big plans,” she joked, though she sounded completely serious.

 

“Big plans for building a straw castle?”

 

“No,” Arya answered quietly, slowly pushing down on the plastic latch until one more rolled out. “Far more sinister plans . . . ”

 

Gendry folded his arms and leaned forward onto the table. “How’ve you been?”

 

It was his first serious question since he had come to pick her up, and it ruined her mood. Letting go of the latch on the dispenser, she sat back in her seat with a sigh as she slouched down. “I’ve been all right,” Arya said, but it was another lie.

 

“You have bags under your eyes. Dark purple ones.”

 

Arya shrugged. “I don’t sleep much.”

 

Gendry furrowed his brow. “Are the sessions with the psychiatrist helping any?”

 

Arya was reluctant to answer him about that one, but there were some things she wasn’t going to lie to Gendry about. That was one of them. “I haven’t been going,” she admitted.

 

Gendry was quiet at first. Arya knew that meant he was really angry, but he was only that angry because he loved her. “You haven’t been _going_?”

 

“No,” Arya said with perfect calm, as if they were discussing the weather.

 

“Arya . . . you can’t just _not_ go,” he said. “You need . . . you need someone to talk to about this, or it’s going to get worse. You don’t sleep. You barely eat. You scare me, Arya.”

 

He was just trying to get through to her. She knew that.

 

“If you won’t talk to me about it, don’t you have someone else you can talk to?” Gendry persisted. “Your sister, maybe?”

 

Arya felt her jaw tighten with resentment, crossing her arms over her chest. “You mean the sister who _lied_ to me? The one who promised to tell me what was going on between her and her boyfriend, and then promptly forgot to tell me and insists it’s no big deal like her promise to me means nothing?”

 

Gendry lost that one. He breathed hard through his nose in frustration, searching for something else. “What about Sandor?” he asked. “You said . . . you said he’d been through something like that himself. That he knew what it was like. Why don’t you talk to him?”

 

The mention of that name only made the resentment harder. “Oh, you mean the guy who refuses to answer my calls because he broke up with my stupid sister? That guy? The one who can’t separate his personal bullshit from his frien—” Arya choked on the word before she could finish it, turning away from Gendry so he couldn’t see her face. Her eyes were burning as her vision blurred before her, but she wasn’t going to let it show.

 

Arya had been trying to call Sandor for months now. Ever since February, in fact, but he didn’t have the decency to pick up the phone or even send her a text back. Even if it was just to say “ _leave me alone_ ” or “ _stop calling me_ ,” he at least owed her that much. All she got in return was silence like he never knew her at all, and all because he broke up with her stupid sister, Sansa. It wasn’t fair. Arya had liked him. She had considered him her friend, and a part of her knew he could help her with what she was going through. If anyone could understand it, it would be Sandor Clegane.

 

He had killed someone, too, and now he had to live with the blood on his hands. Arya needed to know how to do that, too. She needed to know how he did that, how he got by dad after day with those memories in his head and those horrible dreams at night.

 

She needed to know how to be normal again, or if it was even possible after something like that.

 

Getting up from the booth, Arya excused herself from the table and headed over to the girls’ restroom. She hoped Gendry didn’t try to follow her. He just needed to give her a moment to herself. Reaching one of the sinks along the counter, she planted her hands firmly on the ledge and stared at her reflection. She didn’t cry, but her eyes were red. Arya tilted her head back, blinking back the tears until the burn left her. She dabbed away the rest with a ripped piece of paper towel, and then she took some time to compose herself with deep breaths until her heart fell calm again.

 

Gendry was still sitting at the booth when she walked out. The food had arrived while she was gone, so Arya headed towards him only to be halted by a gleam of light on her left that caught her attention. As she stopped to look towards it, she froze in place.

 

Renly Baratheon was seated at a booth by himself with a breakfast plate in front of him, knife and fork discarded momentarily to check the time on his watch. It was evening, and he was eating breakfast food. It was his watch, though, that had reflected the bright beam of sunlight into her eyes and caught her attention. A curious thought struck her. _He did that on purpose_. Arya cast her gaze down to his wrist. His watch was rose gold inlaid with silver markings, probably real, and probably very expensive. As if he couldn’t be bothered with the time as soon as he discovered it, Renly let go of his watch and shook his head with a dismissive gesture. His hands dropped to the table, and then he picked up his silverware again, knife slicing into the meat.

 

As if something was beckoning her with a pull from within, Arya tiptoed over to his table and slid herself into the seat across from him. She couldn’t say what had possessed her to do it. It felt like a chord had locked on tight around her core and pulled, drawing her there against the pull of gravity in the other direction, even though it was her feet that had done the walking to his table.

 

Renly paused in mid-movement like a statue, glancing up from his meal. A look of surprise bloomed across his face. He lowered his silverware. It clattered softly to the porcelain.

 

“Arya,” he said, his surprise sounding genuine to her. He narrowed his eyes in a curious manner, but his face was kind and welcoming. “And what have I done to earn the honor of your company?”

 

 _He’s good with words_. Arya glanced down, feeling nerves stirring in her stomach. Renly had keen eyes, even if they were jovial. She glanced over her shoulder at Gendry. He was looking for her, his eyes spotting her as soon as she had turned around. _One-min-ute_ , she mouthed at him. A heavy frown crossed Gendry’s face, and he raised his eyes beyond her head.

 

Arya turned back around to see Renly gazing curiously in Gendry’s direction.

 

“I’m here with my boyfriend,” she said quickly, which returned Renly’s attention back to her. He had the look of someone listening openly with no annoyance.

 

Aside from Jon, Arya couldn’t remember the last time someone looked at her like that without regarding her with pity.

 

“I saw your watch,” Arya added nonchalantly, lowering her gaze to the piece of jewelry on his wrist. Renly looked down at it as well, making a funny face as he lifted his brow but lowered the corners of his lips. He raised his wrist, regarding the watch as if it was the first time he was seeing it. “It’s pretty,” Arya said. “And bright.”

 

“It was a gift,” Renly told her, resting his forearms on the table.

 

“From who?”

 

His bright eyes darkened at that, bringing a cloud over his joy. Instead of giving her an immediate answer, Renly removed his watch and laid it across the smooth surface of the table before her with care. Using a single finger, he pointed out the intricate design on the gold. He drew it along the length of the watch’s leg. _Silver roses_ , Arya realized with awe.

 

“From Loras,” he revealed at last.

 

His answer hit her like a ton of bricks, knocking the wind out of her lungs. “I’m sorry—”

 

Renly raised a hand to cut her off. “Don’t be,” he said. He drew back in his seat, taking the watch with him. Arya observed as he slid it back onto his wrist. With a snap, the clasp was back in place. She lifted her eyes to his. A sad smile crossed his lips. “I like to be reminded.”

 

Arya didn’t know what to say. She also didn’t know how to talk to him. Hell, she barely knew him but for his name. Renly was a complete stranger to her. He was Robert Baratheon’s brother, the owner of Maegor’s Holdfast. _He probably owns his own restaurant chain, too_ , she thought. Renly owned a lot of things, they said. She guessed he was big in real estate.

 

The most popular man in town, but who was he? Renly knew celebrities, and he knew politicians, and he knew, well, everybody.

 

But Arya knew there was more to it than that. Something told her deep down in her gut, and she knew to listen to it. Renly wasn’t the most popular man in town just because he threw the biggest and best parties this side of the Narrow Sea. He was a businessman. All that money didn’t come out of nowhere. He was a boss. _He had been Sandor’s boss_ , she reminded herself. Arya didn’t know why it was so important to her, but it felt important. She ought not to be digging at things like this, but she couldn’t stop herself.

 

Arya leaned over the table, resting against her forearms. She felt more confident this time as she posed a question to him.

 

“Why are you flanked by five guards?”

 

Renly’s eyes gleamed as he smiled at her. He looked impressed. “You’re very perceptive,” he said. Briefly, he looked down at the table before raising his eyes back to hers. “Most people would say I came alone.”

 

“Behind you,” Arya said, glancing over his shoulder. “You’ve got three at that table, and two at the table across from the one behind me.”

 

Renly raised his eyebrows higher. “Very impressive.” As if on a test, he then asked, “What colors are their shirts?”

 

“Red, navy blue, grey and white striped, green, plaid, and tan,” Arya answered effortlessly.

 

His eyes sparkled. “What gave them away?”

 

“They were watching me,” Arya said, “when I came to sit down with you. They went back to talking like nothing happened, but I saw them look at me. The ones behind me were looking out of the corner of their eyes when I turned to look at my boyfriend.”

 

“You have a talent for finer details,” Renly told her. He looked down and picked up his silverware again, cutting into the ham on his plate. A spike of fear gripped Arya’s heart, though she couldn’t explain why. She was afraid their conversation was over, and she didn’t want it to be. “How’ve you been, Arya?” he then asked, dragging her from her reverie of fear. She looked up to see him chewing his food politely, mouth closed, fork and knife resting delicately against the plate.

 

Renly saw the look on her face, and he slowly stilled his movements.

 

“Lost,” Arya admitted, hearing the waver in her voice.

 

Why him of all people, she couldn’t say. Maybe it was precisely because he was a stranger. _Strangers don’t mean anything to you_ , Arya remembered hearing once, _so it’s easier to tell them the truth_. _You don’t care what they think_. If it was ever true, it was at its truest now. She didn’t admit the reality of her situation to her friends and her family or to Gendry because she didn’t want to worry them. Arya didn’t want them thinking differently of her, so she lied. She lied to spare their feelings. She lied to spare hers.

 

Renly, however, was silent on the other side of the table.

 

The failing sunlight beyond the diner’s windows waned to its lowest point in the sky, splintering through the glass as it hit the center of the table between them. A bright ray of light, warm with a soft focus, separated them. Arya reached out to touch it, to feel its warmth for just a moment, before she got up from the table. It had been long enough, and she ought to return before Gendry got worried about her and what was taking so long.

 

Renly reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pen, clicking it. Arya halted at the sound, turning around to look. The pen was polished navy blue and silver with a fine sheen that captured the sunlight. It was pulled from his dress shirt to match, a blue and white striped button-down with long sleeves.

 

He scribbled something down on a clean napkin, and with three fingers pressed to the paper, slowly slid it towards her across the table.

 

Hesitantly, Arya walked back for it. She picked up the napkin and read it. It was a number.

 

His phone number, written in his fine and elegant handwriting.

 

She raised her eyes to his face in shock. Her heart was pounding a million miles a minute. All she had done was run her mouth to him, and this was the last thing she had expected him to do. It was like being approached by someone famous, them handing out their number in an offer of friendship because they liked you for one reason or another. He was Renly Baratheon, and she was just Arya Stark. Things like this didn’t happen.

 

 _He also saved your life_ , Arya remembered. _Things like that don’t just happen either_.

 

“Call me,” Renly said as he leaned forward, his tone unusually austere. His keen eyes were as inexorable as his voice. “If you ever need anything.”

 

Arya gazed down at the napkin. Her fingers had begun to tremble. Crushing the delicate paper in her fist, she hurried away from his table.

 

Stranger things had happened, but in that moment, Arya couldn’t name any of them.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 100\. Your Eyes, Black Like an Animal — “Feral Love” by Chelsea Wolfe  
> 101\. Smoke and Arrogance — “The Undertaker (Renholder Mix)” by Puscifer  
> 102\. Spend Her Love Until She’s Broke — “Story of My Life” by One Direction  
> 103\. There’s a Beast, and I Let It Run — “This Night” by Black Lab  
> 104\. We Hit a Wall — “We Hit a Wall” by Chelsea Wolfe  
> 105\. Care for No One — “Feral Love” by Chelsea Wolfe  
> 106\. All This Bad Blood — “Bad Blood” by Bastille  
> 107\. Avalanche — “Avalanche” by Matthew Good  
> 108\. Choose Another Way — “Am I Wrong” by Nico & Vinz  
> 109\. The Beat of the Drum — “Lose Your Soul” by Dead Man’s Bones  
> 110\. Trouble on the Way — “Bad Moon Rising” by Mourning Ritual


	111. No Masters or Kings

_* * *_

 

Sandor ran his hands over his face and up through his hair, closing his eyes as he shook his head. He had been sober now for two whole weeks. The first week was hell. Not the first week sober, but the first week with Jaime. He had been fighting it off during that time, sometimes falling into the bottle. Sometimes falling back out of it. It was not easy. None of it was easy, but he had to keep a clear mind for what they were doing, and Jaime wouldn’t tolerate the alcohol on the job. It was insane, giving a damn about what Jaime thought. It was downright astronomical, but right now he didn’t have time to be thinking about that.

 

There were more important things at stake than his problems, and Sandor knew he had to put those things first before himself and his own gratification. Nothing was gratifying about shoving liquor down his throat, but it calmed the hell inside of his head. It quieted the voices, the dissonance, and for one indulging moment, Sandor could just forget about everything. Until, of course, the hangover came in the morning and the cycle would repeat itself. It was like pumping air into a flat tire and then rolling over it again and again until it all went out once more, never bothering to stop and repair the hole.

 

So, he fought it off. He held back. His vision blurred for a moment, and his head felt a dull ache begin somewhere between his eyes. Sandor pinched at the bridge of his nose, hoping it would go away, but the nudging urge had appeared again, and he knew he would have to get through it. He dropped his hand from his face and looked up.

 

Jaime sat across from him on the couch, twiddling a pencil between his fingers as he blew on the eraser shavings on his notebook. He wiped the rest of them away with the side of his hand, and then he continued to sketch again. Sandor knew he was making a layout, but he had forgotten of what. For the past three weeks after they had agreed to help one another take on Jaime’s twin sister together, they sat and listened to endless hours of phone conversations while Jaime sketched out a dozen maps of buildings and places. Sandor recognized some of them, but others were still a mystery to him.

 

They did all of this at Jaime’s home, which had its disadvantages and advantages alike. Sandor’s apartment was no good, given how Cersei might be watching it to keep an eye on him, and they couldn’t have her spot them together. The upside of using Jaime’s place was that Cersei wasn’t keeping tabs on her brother, which was good for them and bad for her. There was plenty of privacy here, too. It was quiet, and Jaime didn’t have any kids with Brienne.

 

The downside was it was Brienne’s home, too, and Jaime didn’t want her getting involved with what they were doing. Personally, Sandor thought they could use a mind like Brienne’s, but Jaime insisted on leaving her out of this. _She’s suffered enough_ was his excuse, but to Sandor it sounded more like an excuse for him than for her. Still, it wasn’t his house and it wasn’t his plan. He wasn’t going to push it with Jaime for him to involve her. Jaime could make up his own mind, and if he wanted to leave Brienne out of it, then that was his decision.

 

Plus, combating the urge to drown himself in alcohol kept Sandor occupied with his own issues long enough to not give a shit about Jaime’s.

 

“What are you drawing a picture of this time?” he managed to ask, turning to look at Jaime.

 

“Sketch,” Jaime said absently. “I’m sketching, and it’s a map. Not a picture.”

 

“A map is a picture.”

 

Jaime waved his free hand dismissively. “Semantics.”

 

Sandor wanted to roll his eyes, but not with the dull ache in his skull. He settled for blinking and rubbing his hand over his face again. “What time is it?”

 

Jaime looked to the nearest clock. He knew where it was. Sandor couldn’t bother to remember. “Three in the morning.”

 

“Fuck,” Sandor hissed. He got up from the couch. “I should get back. Your wife gets off work at five.”

 

“She’s _not_ my wife,” Jaime shot back, “and we’ve still got plenty of time. It’s two more hours ‘til she’s off of nightshift duty, and then she’s got to drive all the way here.”

 

Sandor turned around after walking five steps, holding out his arms. “Well, I’m not fucking doing anything,” he said, “and I’m tired. I’m going home to get some sleep.” He dropped his hands back to his sides and headed for the door.

 

Jaime put down his sketchbook, hurrying to get up from the couch. “Now, wait a second—”

 

If Jaime had some grand scheme to share with Sandor, he didn’t have the time to do it. As soon as Sandor had grasped his coat and yanked it off the peg, the front door flew open and both men were face to face with the sight of a frozen Brienne. Her mouth fell open, and all three of them stood stock still by the door.

 

Brienne’s eyes flitted between Sandor and Jaime. “What — is — this?” she asked slowly, her blue eyes going wild with unsaid possibilities.

 

“Well,” Jaime said, “look who’s home early—”

 

Sandor threw his hands up. “I’m not a part of this—”

 

As he started to move forward, Brienne put a hand out towards his chest to stop him. “Like _hell_ you aren’t!”

 

Jaime held up a single finger. “I can explain,” he offered.

 

“Please,” Brienne exclaimed, “ _do_ that.”

 

“Can we do that without me here?” Sandor asked.

 

“No,” Brienne and Jaime said simultaneously.

 

Sandor tossed his arms up in exasperation, throwing his coat onto the floor a few feet away. He moved out from between Jaime and Brienne and headed for the couch to sit down. If they weren’t going to let him leave, then he was going to get comfortable while they sorted it out. Without him, of course, because he wasn’t going to comment on it. Jaime could talk himself out of this mess.

 

“What is going on?” Brienne insisted. “Why is Sandor here at three a.m.?”

 

“We’re working on a project,” Jaime said. He hesitated. “Construction.”

 

Brienne strode into the house, leaving the front door wide open. Jaime scrambled to shut it behind her as she headed towards the coffee table. She picked up one of his drawings, a sketched out map detailing the floor plan somewhere. “Drawing _maps_ of Tywin Lannister’s estate?”

 

Jaime hurried over to her, carefully plucking the map out of her hands. He began collecting the rest of them into a stack. “I stand my ground,” he announced with perfect calm, and Sandor had to give him credit for his composure. Jaime walked behind the couch with the papers to where Sandor couldn’t see. Sandor heard a drawer screech open, papers rustling.

 

Brienne stared over Sandor’s head with an incredulous look. “You don’t _have_ any ground here—”

 

Next thing he knew, Jaime’s hand was on his shoulder, grasping it in a brotherly clutch. Sandor looked over at it with mild horror as Jaime let go long enough to pat him. “Back me up, Sandor,” he said.

 

Brienne stared between them now, mouth agape. “Who _are_ you,” she demanded, “and _what_ have you done with Jaime?”

 

Jaime let go of Sandor’s shoulder. “I’m his ghoulish double,” he japed. Then, he added more seriously, “Now, please, don’t kill me.”

 

Brienne pointed to the coffee table, which still held a multitude of their doings as of the last three weeks. Jaime’s notebooks, labeled tapes of Cersei’s recorded calls of particular note, city maps, and a list of phone numbers and names of ill repute. “If you don’t explain this to me right now in total honesty, I _will_.”

 

Sandor heard Jaime take a deep breath behind him. He walked around the couch to join them on the opposite side. Sandor was sitting down, but Brienne was still standing.

 

“You might want to sit down for this,” Jaime told her.

 

Brienne stared Jaime in the face for what felt like a long while, her jaw clenched tight, until she finally lowered her gaze and stalked over to the couch to sit down heavily a few feet from Sandor. She hadn’t even removed her coat. The shoulders looked wet from dew. “Well,” she said, “I’m waiting.”

 

By the time Jaime was finished with recounting his story, Brienne looked like she could barely sit upright. She leaned forward with her mouth wide open, holding her stomach. Sandor thought she was going to be sick.

 

“Do you need a bucket?” he asked, just to be sure, and Brienne sprouted up from the couch to dash down the hallway.

 

“Great,” Jaime said flatly.

 

“Hey, you did this, not me,” Sandor accused him.

 

“She’s not going to be happy with this. That’s why I wanted to keep her out of it, and I was trying. I was trying my best.” Jaime looked more sobered up now as he raised his chin, all of his dry wit forgotten, and it brought out the gauntness of his cheeks and the dark circles under his eyes in the dim light.

 

“You can’t fix everything, Lannister,” Sandor told him. He was trying to help in his own way, but he wasn’t ready to call him Jaime. He wasn’t ready for that yet. “Stop trying so hard. You’ll kill yourself.”

 

Jaime rubbed his forehead. “I know.”

 

When Brienne returned from the hall, she looked pale. The color was gone from her wind-bitten cheeks, but her lips were red from wiping. She stumbled into the room, all clunky feet and long legs, and dragged her coat off of her arms sleeve by sleeve until it fell onto the arm of the couch.

 

“You can’t do this, Jaime,” Brienne said slowly, her voice not sounding like her own. It was deeper and scratchier, and Sandor wondered if she had thrown up at the news. He didn’t think it had been that bad, but given his background, Sandor was willing to admit he wasn’t the most reliable person to ask. “This . . . ” She waved her hand over the table, encompassing all of their work. “ . . . This is too dangerous, Jaime. These _people_ are dangerous. We can’t do this again. We can’t take on something this big—”

 

“That’s why _you’re_ not,” Jaime told her firmly. “It’s only me and Sandor on this one. You’re staying out of it.”

 

Brienne raised her incredulous eyes to Jaime’s face. “Do you _really_ think it’s that simple?”

 

“I’m making it simple. You’re not getting involved. I won’t allow it.”

 

“I’m _already_ involved!” Brienne hollered at him, throwing her arm out to the side as if gesturing at somebody beside her, but nothing was there. “We _live_ together, Jaime! We _are_ together! You can’t just say I’m not involved when you put yourself into this kind of situation! If you are involved, _I_ am involved whether I say yes or no to it. There is no middle ground! You’re playing with _lives_ here, Jaime. Life or death. _This is not a game_.”

 

Jaime’s eyes seemed to harden, but his face softened. “No, it’s not a game. When has this ever been a game, Brienne? I’ve broken the rules for my father. I’ve bent the law for my father. I’ve ruined people’s lives _for my father_ , and I have a chance to make up for that now. I had a chance to make up for it then, too. I made my choice then, and I’ll make my choice now.”

 

Jaime stepped forward, the shadows of the room casting a dark shadow against his features. He pointed down at the coffee table or down to his feet—which one, though, Sandor couldn’t tell. He felt like he was eavesdropping on some private moment, even though they both knew he was there. Maybe they had forgotten in the middle of all of their passionate words.

 

“I may not be the man they thought I was,” Jaime revealed, his voice wavering as he spoke, but growing fiercer still, “and they may think me some devil now, but I made a _vow_ to Catelyn Stark, and I will not break my promise to her. I promised I would look out for her daughter, Brienne. I _promised_. That may mean nothing to them now, but what do you think it means to me?” His voice cracked on the last word, his face giving way to a pleading expression. “I’ve _broken_ every promise I’ve made—to the department, to my friends, to my colleagues. To my _family_. I’ve let Tyrion down. I could’ve helped him, but I didn’t. This— _this_ ,” Jaime gestured outward with both arms, “this is my legacy, Brienne. This is what I leave behind for everyone to remember me by.”

 

Jaime lowered his arms at last, the temporary craze leaving his eyes along with the light. They looked dull now, and they looked as empty as he must have felt.

 

 _Since when did Jaime Lannister give a damn about legacy_ , Sandor reflected ruefully, but he kept that thought to himself. He had never known Jaime Lannister to care about anyone other than number one, but Sandor could appreciate this version of Jaime more than the prior one. A Lannister who wanted to help people instead of hurt them. It was something Sandor could get behind and support if Jaime really meant it, and he believed that the golden boy did. Now that he wasn’t so golden anymore. Jaime had got some dirt on his face. In fact, he got his face smeared in it, and then some more thrown at the back of his head for good measure. It had taught him some well-needed humility.

 

A lesson like that was enough to teach them all some well-needed humility. He had been there before himself, after all. Jaime wasn’t the first person to see those kinds of days, and he wouldn’t be the last.

 

“I have to do this, Brienne,” Jaime explained to her. His quiet voice carried softly through the room. “I don’t know if you understand or not, but I’m thinking you do. I won’t abandon Catelyn now. Not now, not when my sister thinks I will help her. I can’t leave Sansa to that. They need me to do what is right, and I have to do it. Not for me. I’ve always done everything for me. Even when I was serving my father, I did that for me. Well, now it’s time to do something for them. It’s time to do something for someone else. It’s time for me to be a different kind of person, and if that puts me in danger, then so be it . . . but you don’t have to be.”

 

Sandor looked up at the same time as Brienne. Both of them felt a sudden chill in the air at Jaime’s shift in words, knowing deep down what was coming next.

 

It was the same choice Sandor had made, albeit much differently.

 

“If there is only one way to keep you safe, and that’s to keep you away from me, then maybe . . . maybe you need to leave,” Jaime finished, his tremulous voice fading off into the silence.

 

The words weren’t even for Sandor, but he felt the blow of them to his gut all the same. He had made a similar choice with Sansa, not wanting to put her through any more danger than he already had, but he had known simple words wouldn’t have worked. Sansa wouldn’t have accepted them despite knowing the risks, and Brienne looked like she’d be the first one to spit on them and stomp them out with her boots. In fact, she looked as if Jaime had just reared back and slapped her hard across the face. Her cheeks were still pale, though; paler, even, than before.

 

There was a long moment of silence between them all. Sandor didn’t dare think of being the one to break it. He shouldn’t have been here for this, anyway. This was private business between these two, and he wanted none of it, but the words had already been said, already thrown out in the open in front of him, and now he was going to have to watch it all play out like some dramatic soap opera that he wanted no part of. Not today, and not tomorrow, but it was too late for that. The die was cast.

 

Brienne, though, had more grace than Sandor expected of a woman her size and her temperament. He watched as she glanced down at the coffee table, clenching her fists hard at her sides, so hard her knuckles turned white, and regarded the stacks of unnamed papers, journals, maps, and floor plans with scrutinizing eyes. As she pursed her lips, Sandor expected to hear another outburst from her, but Brienne managed to keep her cool.

 

Very slowly, and with clunky movement, Brienne maneuvered around the coffee table to the side with Sandor. She plopped down unceremoniously on the couch, her weight pulling the cushions towards her. Placing her hands upon the table, she kept her gaze on the journals, refusing to meet Jaime’s eyes as her jaw flexed its muscles.

 

Sandor was expecting something; he knew Jaime was expecting something, too.

 

Finally, Brienne lifted her head. Her jaw was still clenched tight. Sandor thought for one wild moment that she would pick up the bulky journals one by one and toss them at Jaime’s head, but her tense shoulders relaxed as she released a deep breath, and her next words changed everything.

 

“Okay,” she said in surprisingly calm and steady voice. “Where do we begin?”

 

 


	112. Details with the Devil

_* * *_

 

The wind was picking up, and with it, Sansa’s heart. It was an end of the school year celebration for those graduating. In attendance were most of her classmates, their parents as well as her own, and some younger siblings who could not stay home alone. They were hosting it on the grounds just outside of the school under white tents to shield them from the sun or any sudden rainfall. Only there wasn’t any sun out today. It was cloudy, windy, and it looked as though any moment it could rain.

 

Sansa had separated from her parents who had come with Rickon and Bran. Bran had run off from the lot of them ages ago, but he was an adventurous boy, and it was practically expected of him. Rickon, on the other hand, was enjoying the act of playing with the long tables crested with treats, finger foods, and punch bowls to quench their thirst. Her father, Ned, was talking with his old friend, Robert. A second glance told Sansa that her mother was enjoying the conversation as well, laughing just as jovially as her father at a story that Mr. Baratheon was recalling with the utmost exuberance as he threw back one of his arms.

 

She cast her gaze over the crowd, but it was so big that many of the faces became a blur. Some younger students were attending, but they were all family members of someone graduating. Sansa looked for her friends, but saw none of them. With a deep sigh, she drank the last of her punch and placed it upon an empty spot of the tablecloth behind her. It was a shimmery gold, but instead of feeling like silk, it felt like parchment underneath her fingers.

 

“Oh, dear Sansa,” came a familiar voice, “it’s so wonderful to see you here . . . ”

 

Sansa turned around at once, seizing up briefly at the sight of Cersei Lannister in a crimson and gold dress with a matching coat on top of it. She regarded Sansa with a warm smile much unlike the ones Sansa remembered seeing on her in the past, and then Cersei looked her up and down from head to toe as if surveying Sansa’s appearance for critique.

 

Cersei took hold of Sansa’s hand and lifted her arm slightly to observe the sleeve of her jacket. It was a deep navy blue to match her dress. Her mother had helped Sansa to pick them out, and they had chosen the blue to go with her eyes. Cersei, however, judged the outfit with a disdainful but mildly affectionate look as she brushed her free hand over the sleeve of Sansa’s jacket.

 

“What dreary colors, Sansa,” Cersei remarked, releasing Sansa’s hand and lifting her gaze to look Sansa in the eyes. “You ought to wear something brighter next time, like gold.” She reached up to caress a finger through a loose lock of Sansa’s red hair. “It would go so good with your hair.”

 

Sansa knew that Cersei likely meant well, but she took the assessment as a little bit of a blow to her appearance. Still, she managed a smile.

 

“Thank you, Ms. Lannister,” she said politely, remembering her manners despite how Cersei’s words made her feel inside. “I will remember that for next time.”

 

Cersei’s smile grew at that, and she took a step forward to stand beside Sansa as she slid her arm beneath Sansa’s elbow and locked their embrace together. Sansa found herself falling into step beside Cersei as the other woman guided her away from the refreshment tables with no particular destination in mind but the open turf before them. It was crowded with bodies, but Cersei weaved a stringent path to avoid the people until she and Sansa were walking upon the grass with plenty of open space about them.

 

Cersei placed her hand upon Sansa’s arm as she held it in her grasp. “How have you been, my sweet Sansa?”

 

“As good as to be expected, I suppose,” Sansa replied, not really sure what else she could say. Things had not, of course, been very good, but they were as good as she had been able to make them, all things considered in her life as of late.

 

“And your sister?” Cersei prodded, patting Sansa’s arm. “How is she?”

 

“Better than me,” Sansa lied effortlessly, finding it far too easy to do. The thought made her uncomfortable, but Sansa was not quite as willing to share information about Arya as she was about herself. She was becoming a little bit better at lying than she used to be, a trait she was not entirely proud of, but it was useful. The way people poked and prodded at her ever since her escape from the hands of Gregor Clegane had fashioned Sansa to build up some rather impressive walls in the aftermath.

 

After all, Arya’s business was also her own. Sansa would let her sister choose the manner of who found out what about her life during these difficult times, which seemed to follow them both everywhere they went. Nightmares followed each of them out of that hospital, though Arya had been less inclined to talk about hers and more inclined to act as if they didn’t exist.

 

“That’s good to hear,” Cersei said, patting Sansa’s arm gently. “I was so horrified when I heard about what had happened to both of you. What _monsters_ those men were, to do such things to two innocent girls . . . ”

 

Sansa swallowed past a catch in her throat, wondering why Cersei was bringing up this at a graduation festivity. It was a time to be happy, but the woman beside her was clouding up her head with dark memories.

 

“Yes, of course,” Sansa replied quickly, “but if we could talk about something else—”

 

A laugh escaped Cersei’s lips like the ring of a soft bell on the air, and she halted suddenly upon the grass, abruptly causing Sansa to stop with her. “Oh, foolish me,” she said with a grin, shaking her head. “Forgive me, Sansa. I am being most inappropriate. Let us talk about something more _jovial_ ,” Cersei suggested as she leaned in close to Sansa’s side.

 

As Cersei began walking once more, Sansa fell into step beside her again.

 

“Oh!” Cersei exclaimed at once, laying her hand onto Sansa’s arm again. “I have just the thing for us to talk about. Did you hear about Joffrey’s new young lady? I am sure the two of you are good friends now and there are no hard feelings with him seeing someone new—or maybe you’ve heard it from her? I’m not sure.” She waved her hand dismissively. “You know I don’t keep up with these teenage things. Have you, my dear? Have you heard it from her?”

 

Sansa felt her heart rate quicken at once. She had no idea who Cersei was talking about, but she had a feeling it wasn’t going to be pleasant. Cersei was digging in her questions as if she was fishing for a reaction on purpose.

 

As flustered as Sansa was becoming, she attempted to steady her voice when she spoke. “I’m not sure who you mean, Ms. Lannister—”

 

“Why, the Tyrell girl, of course. Aren’t you friends with her? I thought you were friends with her. Oh, maybe it was someone else . . . ”

 

All at once, every sound was drowned out from Sansa’s ears. The world fell deaf to her as Cersei jostled her through the crowd. Sansa felt herself moving, but she didn’t see the destination. The bodies were all a blur around her, and the voice going on in the background sounded more like noise from beneath water than an actual voice. The heat crept into her face from underneath her jacket, stifling her, and she felt herself breathing faster than before.

 

It was all a dream, and a very bad one. Margaery was her friend, and Margaery knew how horrible Joffrey was. She would never date him. She would never, not in a million . . .

 

“Here they are,” Cersei announced happily as Sansa felt them come to a sudden standstill amongst the crowd, and Cersei patted her arm once more.

 

Sansa glanced up to see that Cersei had walked her all the way to a trestle table under one of the biggest pavilions on the lawn. Underneath its white awning, she saw Joffrey and Margaery seated at the center of the table as if they were royalty seated before their subjects. Margaery was laughing and leaning towards him as she opened her mouth, allowing Joffrey to place a grape between her lips. She bit into the fruit, giggling afterwards, and pulling back from Joffrey as she gave him what could only have been described as bedroom eyes.

 

The sight made Sansa pale, and all of the warmth fled from her. Not because it was her best friend with her ex-boyfriend, but because Margaery was her friend and Margaery knew that Joffrey was no good. It didn’t make any sense. It didn’t make any sense at all.

 

If Sansa was bold enough, she would march straight up to that table and demand from Margaery what was going on, what possessed her to make such a decision as this, but Sansa was not feeling very bold right then and she did not want to be anywhere near Joffrey again. Instead, she drew in a deep, shaky breath to steady her nerves, and then she raised her chin a little higher.

 

Cersei might have wanted a reaction out of Sansa on purpose, but Sansa was not going to give her the satisfaction of a very long one.

 

“That’s wonderful,” Sansa forced herself to say out loud, adding a smile onto the words. “I am very happy for them.” The smile did not quite reach her eyes, but Cersei wasn’t looking.

 

“Isn’t it?” Cersei replied, sighing softly as she squeezed Sansa’s arm. “They make such a lovely couple, don’t they? I must admit, I did not think much of Margaery at first, but now I think it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

 

Sansa furrowed her brow at that and looked up at Cersei. “What do you mean?”

 

“Hmm?” Cersei raised her eyebrows as she gazed ahead, and then she lowered her gaze to Sansa. She appeared to be genuinely confused by the question before a light dawned in her eyes and she grinned down at Sansa. “Oh, you know,” she said, leaning slightly into Sansa’s side in a teasingly affectionate manner, “a good relationship. They are hard to find, aren’t they?”

 

The look in Cersei Lannister’s eyes as she gazed down at Sansa with that smile of hers was unnerving. Something inside of Sansa also told her that Cersei couldn’t have been so blind to her own son’s nature as this, and the thought disturbed her further.

 

Somehow she doubted Joffrey was capable of such a thing as a good relationship. She also thought it was about time this conversation was over.

 

“If you’ll excuse me, Ms. Lannister,” Sansa declared in a hurry, making sure to use her best considerate voice as she smiled sadly. “I don’t mean to be rude, but my younger brother was sitting at the refreshment tables all by himself and I’m afraid I should go check on him now. It was good talking to you, though, and I hope I see you again soon.”

 

With that, she pulled her arm free from Cersei Lannister and hurried away in her quickest but least conspicuous pace. Sansa did not want to seem too eager to get away from Cersei, but it was the foremost thing on her mind. She wanted to get away from Cersei, and then she wanted to find something to take her mind off of everything that Cersei had just put into her head.

 

Sansa made a beeline through the crowd back to the refreshment tables she last saw Rickon at, not intending to find him but at least intending to appear as if she was looking for him. Pretending, Sansa decided with a firm press of her lips, was a lot more work than she cared for, but it was necessary in this case. Cersei’s eyes might still be on her, Sansa realized, and the realization came with an odd sense of cold dread pooling in her stomach.

 

When Sansa found Rickon with the lower half of his face covered in white icing, she had never felt more happier in her life.

 

“Rickon!” Sansa exclaimed, and she moved to sit down beside him at the table. “Tell me,” she said, putting on her happiest voice for him, “how you would like to go to the arcade instead of staying here any longer?”

 

Rickon’s face lit up immediately, and he nodded his head faster than she thought possible. “Yes!” he shouted. “Yes, please, take me to the arcade!”

 

Sansa grinned at her brother’s enthusiasm, and she took him by the hand and led him straight over to their parents in the crowd. She wanted to sneak off before a misfortune of running into Margaery and Joffrey befell her once they left their table or once the award announcements began. Whichever came first, and one of them would come, Sansa knew she would eventually be face to face with them in the crowd and she did not want that one bit.

 

An opportunity might come later for her to talk to Margaery in private—if that was even a wise idea, Sansa wasn’t sure—but for now, avoidance seemed best.

 

Thankfully, their parents were nowhere near Mr. Baratheon anymore in case any questions were asked about why she was leaving early. Sansa promptly held out her free hand to her father once she reached them. She cleared her throat, putting on her most innocent of smiles.

 

“Keys?” she asked politely, which earned her a sideways look from Ned.

 

“What for?” Ned asked, glancing between Sansa and Rickon with a curious gaze. Catelyn, too, seemed suspicious, until Sansa dropped her smile and decided to be honest with them.

 

“Joffrey is here,” Sansa said in a soft voice. “With Margaery.”

 

At once, understanding dawned in both of their eyes. Catelyn and Ned shared a look, and then Ned reached into his pocket and fished out his set of keys to give them to Sansa. They had brought two vehicles with them, so if she left with one of them, it wouldn’t be an inconvenience for the rest of them to get back home.

 

“Where are you going?” Catelyn asked, looking at Sansa and then Rickon.

 

“I promised Rickon I’d take him to the arcade,” Sansa said. _Which is better than this_ , she wanted to say, but she didn’t say it. Ned and Catelyn already seemed to understand, and they didn’t need any further explanation.

 

“Well,” Ned told her, “we’re only here for you, so how about once we say our farewells to everyone, we join the two of you with Bran for a few games, and—” Ned glanced down at Rickon with a grin on his face and ruffled his hair. “If your belly isn’t full of _cake_ , then we can go and get some ice cream. How does that sound?”

 

“ _Yes!_ ” Rickon screamed, earning a few startled looks from passersby as well as a few laughs from their parents.

 

“Sounds like a plan,” Catelyn agreed, raising her eyebrows and smiling.

 

Sansa grinned at them and gripped her brother’s hand tighter. When she looked down at him and spoke, the enthusiasm in her voice wasn’t imaginary but very real. “Are you ready to have some _fun_?” she asked him.

 

Rickon squealed his excitement into an array of _yes yes yes_ , and Sansa laughed in response and toted him off towards the car.

 

“Drive safe!” Ned called.

 

“Wear your seatbelts!” hollered Catelyn after him.

 

Sansa would have rolled her eyes, but she was too busy being happy for once in a long time to care much about anything else but smiling as she walked away.

 

 


	113. Mercy, Mercy

  _* * *_

 

Maegor’s Holdfast looked different during the day than it did at night, which so far was the only time Arya could recall seeing it. She never came this way during the day, and none of her friends ever took her here. None of its signature flashing lights were running, so from the outside, it simply had the appearance of a red bricked building with the feel of castle-like design. The parking lot was also near empty, save for a few cars mostly parked out back behind the fence. There were only one or two out front in plain sight.

 

With a hood thrown over her head and her hands in her pockets, she walked up to the front entrance but thought it awkward to knock on the front door. Still, she didn’t know of any other entrance or exit to the place, though she was sure there was one around here somewhere, but she wasn’t going to go poking around for it. Even if it was broad daylight. Arya took a deep breath. If only she could still the quick beating of her heart, but she couldn’t, not until she got this over with.

 

The doors were solid black, made of thick wood, and taller than most doors. She raised her fist and knocked, but then realized on the third one that they probably wouldn’t hear her and that was probably also the reason for the small button by the entrance off to the left.

 

Arya’s face flushed, and she reached over to buzz the door ringer.

 

When one of the doors opened up, it was by a broad-shouldered man in uniform. He was young, maybe in his twenties, with blonde hair and sharp green eyes. He wore a suit and tie, and he had a little spiral cord looped behind his ear that ran down his neck into his jacket.

 

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Who are you?” he asked.

 

Arya opened her mouth to say something, but found her throat dry and scratchy. She cleared it and swallowed before speaking. “Arya,” she told him. “My name’s Arya Stark.” The young man’s eyes lit up in recognition. “I was invited here by Mr. Baratheon.”

 

He nodded his head and opened the door to let her pass, closing it behind her. It was just as different inside as it was outside. Again, there were no flashing lights, so the matte black paint of the entire set up was visible under the normal glare of white lights. The blue lights that were usually lit up behind the bar were off, and Arya kept turning around to look at everything until the young man cleared his throat at her.

 

“I have to pat you down,” he said. “Rules.”

 

Arya sighed and flung out her arms dramatically. Once he was done, he led her down a set of steps and through the empty dance floor towards a door at the far end of the room. Arya looked up as they passed through it. The mirror ball hung from the ceiling, picking out specks of light as she stared at it and walked past.

 

The young man took her down a dark hallway next, and Arya started to feel just a little bit claustrophobic. She didn’t know these people, and she definitely knew that none of them were safe, so why was she here?

 

 _Curiosity_ , she told herself, but that wasn’t entirely true.

 

Arya was suddenly distracted by her thoughts when a young woman, wearing a hood much like herself, brushed past her in the hallway. She glanced up quickly, just in time to see the other woman look up as well, and saw a familiar pair of blue eyes peeking back at her from amongst the pretty, sharp-nosed features of the face. The recognition was instantaneous, and Arya’s eyes followed her as she whipped her head over her shoulder, even as the other woman lowered her head and quickened her pace to hurry away.

 

She was only stopped when she ran right into the young security guard who was leading the way.

 

He didn’t say anything, but he looked over his shoulder at her and narrowed his eyes, and Arya managed little more than a noncommittal shrug in response. Past his blond hair, which was lit in a halo of florescent blue, Arya spotted beyond his shoulder an open door that led into an extravagant office. She peeked over him, even as he stepped back against the wall and held out his arm towards the door.

 

“He’s waiting for you,” the young man told her flatly, and Arya swallowed past a nervous catch in her throat and walked around him into the open office.

 

While there were two florescent blue lights by the doorway, the office itself was well-lit with normal lighting. Arya glanced around in a sweeping arc across the room, taking in the sight of the paintings and fish tank, the desk and high-backed leather chair, and a table of refreshments on the opposite end of the office as the desk. There were snacks and clear crystal and liquor and other things she wasn’t immediately sure of.

 

“Arya!” Renly called out suddenly. He just emerged from another door in the far corner to the left, a door that nearly blended into the wall. The sound of his voice made Arya jump, and then the door behind her shut. It caused her head to whip around and look at it. Renly laughed.

 

“Don’t be a jitterbug,” he told her. “Come on, sit down. Oh, wait, would you like something to drink?” Renly made his way over to the table of refreshments off to her right. He picked up a decanter and poured himself a drink. “Non-alcoholic for you, I imagine? You’re still sixteen, aren’t you?”

 

“Seventeen,” Arya corrected him, still standing up by the door. “I’m seventeen. I had a birthday in April.”

 

Renly paused after lifting up his drink. “Well,” he said, “happy belated birthday to you, then.” He downed his drink and poured a second one, heading over to his desk with it. He gestured at one of the open chairs as he passed by it. “Please, sit down, Arya. You’re a guest. There’s no need for you to stand.”

 

Before he could sit down, Arya countered Renly with a question.

 

“Why is Margaery Tyrell here?” she asked him, tilting her head to the side as she narrowed her eyes.

 

Arya knew that’s who she saw in the hallway. She’d know that face anywhere. It wasn’t likely to be one she would forget or mistake for someone else. Margaery Tyrell had a very distinct face, and she had been friends with Sansa for years.

 

Renly paused just beside his chair. He glanced up in her direction. His face was blank at first, but then he smiled congenially at her and took another sip from his glass. “She’s an old friend,” he answered. “She’s welcome to come by whenever she wants.”

 

Renly tugged his jacket straight and smoothed it down with his hand, and then he sat behind his desk. Arya remained on her feet, but she crossed the room until she was standing behind one of his guest chairs before the desk. She pulled her hands from of her pockets, placing them on the back of the chair to hold it.

 

“I don’t know about you,” Arya began, being blunt but also careful about exactly what she said to him, “but if my ex-boyfriend’s sister started seeing the grandson of the man who my ex-boyfriend’s murderer used to work for, well, I’d be pretty vexed about it, wouldn’t you?”

 

Renly watched her over the rim of his glass with twinkling eyes. He drank some more before putting it down, a sweeping grin on his face as he regarded her. He shook his finger at her. “See, that’s what I like about you, Arya Stark,” Renly told her. “You’re very perceptive . . . and very intelligent.”

 

Arya felt her heart rate quicken as her fingers flexed, their grip loosening on the chair. “Most people would call that nosy,” she said. She couldn’t help it, but her voice fell and wavered a little bit out of trepidation.

 

She had an idea of who Renly was, and yet she was here anyway.

 

Why was she here?

 

 _Amusing him_ , she told herself, but that wasn’t exactly true either.

 

Renly lifted his eyebrows. He held out both his arms. “I’m not most people.”

 

His calm reply finally allowed Arya to relax. She sat down in the chair instead of continuing to stand, her hands falling into her lap. They still fidgeted, though, a twitch that hadn’t left her yet. It gave her something to do other than just talking. “You’re not mad that I noticed her?” she inquired, raising her chin.

 

Renly tilted his head. “Why would I be mad?”

 

Arya opened her eyes a little wider. “Did you _want_ me to notice?”

 

Renly smiled secretively, a gleam appearing in his eyes again. It made him seem young instead of devilish, and it reminded her of her younger brothers’ mischief at home. They smiled like that.

 

“You’re not worried I’ll tell someone?” she asked him next, and the gleam in his eyes took a dark turn.

 

“Who would you tell?” Renly inquired right back. “Surely you wouldn’t tell the people who are responsible for your kidnapping in the first place, would you?”

 

Arya’s heart skipped a beat. “What?”

 

Renly shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I mean, the only people you’d benefit from telling this to would be Joffrey’s family, the Lannisters, correct? But why? What for? What would you gain?” He leaned forward onto his desk, folding his arms. “What would they give you? As you said, Loras’s killer used to work for Tywin Lannister. He kidnapped your sister.” Renly leaned over a little further, lowering his voice despite them both being the only people in the room. “And I think you know as well as I that you were _not_ the intended target to be taken back to that cabin.”

 

All of the sound rushed from Arya’s ears as if she had ascended too high and the pressure made them pop. She took a deep breath, seeing a brief flash behind her eyes of those trees she ran through as she dashed for her escape. Arya could still feel the hard twigs snap beneath her feet as she ran. She could still feel her hair flying into her mouth as she turned her head to look over her shoulder.

 

She blinked once, and then twice, coming back to the present.

 

“How do you know that?” Arya asked quietly, feeling her fist clench in her lap.

 

Renly leaned back into his chair casually. “I make it my business to know things. I have a trade, you see. It deals a lot in knowledge. And power. But the two come often hand in hand, something most people won’t tell you without saying it as if it’s a mocking joke.”

 

“Joffrey’s father is your brother,” Arya blurted out.

 

The corner of Renly’s mouth jerked upward into a sour expression. “Family ties can complicate things, I admit, but I’m no more happy about it than you are.”

 

“Why am I here?” Arya demanded. “Why’d you ask me here?”

 

Renly cocked an eyebrow at her. He held up a single hand, palm upward. “Why did you come?” he countered.

 

Arya’s jaw tightened. She was angry, but then it faded as quickly as it had come, and she wasn’t sure. “I don’t know,” she said.

 

Renly took a deep breath, exhaling it slowly as he spun his chair forward again to properly face the desk. He folded his hands together over it. “You’re a smart, savvy young girl. You’re braver than half the men that work for me. You’re also the only known person to escape Ramsay Bolton. Hell, you killed him. Yourself.” Renly slowly shook his head, parting his hands from each other. “I can’t imagine how that felt, but I can imagine how lost that must make you feel in this world. It’s big, and it’s cruel, but one person can make a difference.”

 

Renly pointed at her over the desk with both of his hands folded together again.

 

“You,” he told her, “can make a difference. If you want to, of course. There’s no pressure. You can get up and walk away—” Renly made an extravagant gesture towards the door with his arm, “—and never have to worry about this day ever again. I consider us friends. Your family are good people, too. I’ll always honor that.” Renly tipped his head forward and gave her a pointed look. “I promise on my word as a Baratheon.”

 

Arya was too stunned to reply. Her mouth hung open in shock. Renly wanted to hire her—but for what? She was just a girl, like he said. Just a girl. She wasn’t in any kind of position to work for somebody like him. She didn’t even know what he wanted her to do. What _was_ she supposed to do if she worked for him?

 

Her head swam with too many questions, but Arya knew even if she asked right now, he wouldn’t be completely honest with her. If she knew anything, she knew a lifestyle like this wasn’t something you could just get out of once you got in. It was permanent.

 

It was for life.

 

Arya rose quickly, so quick that a rush of vertigo went to her head and the whole room swayed unsteadily in her vision.

 

“I think I should go home,” she said, her hand gripping on the chair for support. Her grip was so tight her knuckles turned white, and Renly gazed at her hand for a moment, committing the reaction to his memory. Arya knew the look in his eyes, and she knew that’s what it meant.

 

He slowly unfolded his hands, sitting back in his chair. Renly looked at her, and then he gestured towards the door.

 

“As I said,” he told her.

 

There was no anger in his voice, and Arya didn’t see any in his eyes, but she had to wonder if this was what he was hoping for from her. He clearly wanted her to say yes to his proposal, or he wouldn’t have invited her over here. Arya couldn’t imagine saying yes to it, though. She couldn’t imagine anything right now, save for getting out of here and getting back home.

 

 _It was stupid to come here_ , she scolded herself, trying to walk towards the door in a normal pace to not look like she was rushing to get away.

 

“Oh, and Arya,” Renly called out from his desk, causing her to pause with her hand just above the door handle to his office.

 

She lowered her hand, turning back to look at him. “Yeah?”

 

“If you ever change your mind,” Renly told her, looking right at her. “You know where to find me.”

 

It hung unanswered in the air, compelling Arya to respond.

 

“Okay,” she said, though it didn’t feel final. Arya nodded her head quickly in his direction as an acceptance and a farewell in one, and then she turned away from him and twisted open the door handle.

 

“Do you need a ride home?” Renly asked almost as an afterthought. “One of my men can give you a ride—”

 

“I’m just fine,” Arya said hastily. “Thank you,” she added, a little more slowly. “I can walk. It’s no problem. I like the exercise.”

 

Renly smiled somewhat. “’Til next time, then,” he said.

 

Arya walked out of the warm air of his office and into the cool wash of it in the hallway beyond. The young man in the hall stopped her and offered to show her to the exit. Even though Arya declined, he ignored it and stepped in front of her to lead the way. He held open the door for her when they finally reached it, but he didn’t say anything else as Arya passed over the threshold and back into the sunlight of the world beyond the club.

 

Squinting, she looked up at the sky. It was a bright, clear day for once. There had been so much rain and wind lately, but not today. Today the sky was empty and the air was crisp. Arya breathed it in and gathered her hoodie around herself and stuffed her hands back into her pockets. Stepping off of the curb, she crossed the street and kicked at loose stones as she walked away from the club.

 

She didn’t know what possessed her to come here. Arya paused at the end of the street, gazing back over her shoulder at the unlit sign for Maegor’s Holdfast. The sun was behind it, glaring and blocking out most of it from view.

 

She kept her hood high to hide her face, turning her back to Maegor’s Holdfast as she hurried away.

 

 


	114. Wayward Sons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** So, um, oh god. I haven't updated this in half a year. Well, I'm working on getting this story back on track so I can get it finished. Who's with me? ;-)

_* * *_

 

Sitting in a parked car on the side of the road, as it turned out, was in fact quite boring.

 

Jaime had done this a million times before when he still commanded respect and wore a badge, but he never remembered being this anxious and yet this bored in the middle of it. He had been staring through the windshield for the last hour. If the shadows in the windows counted for anything, then he had seen exactly four instances of action tonight. There hadn’t been any movement in the last thirty or so minutes.

 

He turned up his wrist and looked down at his watch. While Jaime had been staring through the windshield for the last hour, they had technically been here for at least three hours. The hour before this one just involved binoculars instead of his naked eye, though it wasn’t as if there was anything else to see tonight from the looks of it.

 

Sighing at the time, Jaime reached for his drink. _One more hour_ , he thought. _Maybe we’ll see something_.

 

Beside him, Sandor spoke up. “How much longer do we have to do this tonight, Lannister? My ass is numb from sitting.”

 

“One more hour,” Jaime said. He took another swig of his water.

 

“A fucking hour?”

 

“You’ll survive.”

 

“Fucking hell,” Sandor cursed, though it came out more like a growl. Jaime did his best to ignore it. He knew why Sandor wanted to get out of the vehicle. The asshole wanted another drink, and he wasn’t breaking one open in Jaime’s car. A number of laws were already in violation tonight, though discreetly as far as they were concerned, and Jaime didn’t want to add on to that list further.

 

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” Jaime taunted. Half of it was out of boredom, but he didn’t think he would touch a nerve with a small joke like that. He was wrong, of course. Sandor froze in the seat next to him, and the air, which was previously unventilated and stuffy, suddenly rose to a dense, thick tension out of nowhere.

 

“My mother’s dead,” Sandor said.

 

“Shit,” Jaime swore, bowing his head. He held up his hand in surrender. “Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

 

“That’s all right,” Sandor continued in a falsely upbeat tone. “As long as you still kiss your father’s ass, I’d call it even.”

 

Jaime bristled, of course, but it wasn’t something he was going to fight over in a stuffy, unventilated car with an agitated, ill-tempered overgrown man. Besides, he had struck the first blow. Technically speaking, it was only fair. “Let’s change the subject,” he suggested, oddly cheerful, and picked up the binoculars to see if it would improve his field of vision when it came to Cersei’s house. “Like when are you going to talk to Sansa about that bullshit you pulled on her?”

 

It was another sensitive subject, but at this point, everything between them was a sensitive subject. There was little good blood between them, and they had only in recent months been able to just barely tolerate each other.

 

Sandor was tight-lipped and quiet beside him until he shifted in his seat and an odd, deep rumbling seemed to come from his chest. Jaime paused, glancing over at Sandor. “If you’re hungry,” he told Sandor, trying to be a smartass because he knew well enough that wasn’t a grumbling stomach, “there’s more beef jerky in a bag behind you.” Jaime jutted his finger over his shoulder and returned it to the binoculars a moment later.

 

The rumbling came deeper this time, more agitated than before. “I’m only going to tell you once, Lannister,” Sandor warned in a dangerously low voice. “If you don’t watch it, I’m going to shove those—”

 

Jaime threw his hands up, holding the binoculars in his left—away from Sandor. “Hey, hey, hey, no need for violence here. We’re trying to be friendly. This is me being friendly.” With his hand, he gestured between the two of them. “We can be friends.” Pausing for a moment, Jaime had to mentally reconsider his words and correct them out loud. “We can _try_ to be friends.”

 

Sandor moved forward too quick, startling Jaime. He looked like a snarling dog in the blackness of the vehicle as he bared his teeth. “Friends, Jaime? You want to be _friends_? How about I tell you something, then, _friend_? You know who got those documents on you and your precious children?” Sandor violently drove his own thumb into his chest. “ _I_ did. _Me_. All _me_.” He raised his eyebrows, a mocking look of triumph on his twisted features. “You still want to be my _friend_ , Lannister?”

 

Jaime was known for being hot-tempered, but this went beyond that. He couldn’t even think; he just reacted, lurching forward. “You _son-of-a_ —”

 

The potential fight was interrupted by a loud tapping against Jaime’s driver side window. A blinding light hit their eyes, and Jaime scrambled with the binoculars to put them away out of sight before he could look at the window to try and get a look of who had approached them, but beyond the flashlight, Jaime couldn’t see anything. Carefully, he rolled down the window. This thing with Sandor would have to wait.

 

Dany smiled brilliantly at Jaime as soon as he got the window down far enough. _Fuck_ , Jaime thought. He squinted at the light. She leaned against his car, glancing past his face and flinging the flashlight in Sandor’s face, too.

 

“So,” Dany said, “do you mind telling me what you two are doing out here?”

 

“Oh, you know, just hanging out,” Jaime answered her slowly. “Bullshitting.” He nodded his head. “Guy stuff.”

 

Dany aimed the flashlight down at a pile of empty convenient store wrappers by Sandor’s feet and laying between their two seats. A moment later, she angled the flashlight and its beam landed on the binoculars as well. “Looks like a stakeout,” she offered, turning the beam back onto Jaime’s face. He squinted again, forcing a smile at her.

 

Jaime shook his head in disagreement, reaching up to scratch his neck. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

 

“He likes spying on people,” Sandor suddenly spoke up, throwing Jaime under the bus. “He’s a dirty perv.”

 

“Hey, now, I didn’t—”

 

“Boys,” Dany called over Jaime’s rising voice, “I don’t care for your games.” She stood up straight and turned off her flashlight, pointing her arm down the street. “Do you know who lives six blocks in that direction?”

 

Jaime knew the answer to that question. They were spying on the house that was six blocks in that direction. Six blocks in that direction was his father’s old estate. Six blocks in that direction was Cersei’s new home.

 

“My father used to live on this road,” Jaime said, nodding his head. He needed to maintain his cool. He touched his chest, placing a full hand over his heart. “I grew up here. This is practically my home.”

 

Dany pursed her lips, narrowing her eyes thoughtfully. “Your sister now lives in that house,” she informed him. “Six blocks down.”

 

Jaime grinned at that, turning to glance over at Sandor. Sandor’s face was wholly inscrutable. It was as blank as a canvas. His eyes briefly caught Jaime’s gaze, but he said nothing. “I could’ve _sworn_ she told me that,” Jaime laughed, looking back at Dany. “Yes, yes, now I remember her mentioning it. Personally, I thought it was stupid, moving into a home where our father was so easily murdered in cold blood—did you _ever_ catch the person responsible, Agent Dany?” Jaime tilted his head, gazing at her with the same judgmental expression as the one she had been giving him since she pulled up.

 

“We’re still looking into it,” Dany replied coolly. She didn’t seem to like his tone any more than he liked hers, but he figured he could avoid further awkwardness with her tonight after pointing that out.

 

“Good,” Jaime responded in a firm voice. “You keep doing that. I am sure you’ll find him. Or her.” He shrugged, and then he leaned on his arm against the door while tilting his head out of the window. “You never know,” Jaime whispered, a raised eyebrow to accompany the words.

 

Dany’s sour look only grew stronger. Finally, she glanced between them and the manor in the distance. Her eyes landed on Jaime and remained steady. “All right, Jaime,” she told him, patting the hood of his car and leaning in close. “Tell you what. I am going to go back to my vehicle. I am going to buckle myself in. I am going to turn on my lights, and then I am going to start the engine. From there, you have exactly five minutes to pull off of this curb and leave before I call your former buddies at the station and cite three violations right now that are going to make your night a living hell. Do I make myself clear?”

 

He grinned up at her. “Crystal,” he says.

 

Dany nodded once in approval at his response, and then she pushed herself off of his car. “ _Five_ minutes,” she repeated, and then she walked out of his sight back to her vehicle.

 

Jaime could hear the crisp footsteps of her boots on the pavement as he rolled the window up. “I liked her better when she was Tyrion’s _wife_.”

 

“You provoked her,” Sandor spoke up beside him.

 

“And _where_ were you during that whole conversation?” Jaime threw back at him. He snatched up his keys, fumbling with them in the dark. “A little help would’ve been _nice_.”

 

“You were digging a hole just nicely on your own. You didn’t need none of my help.”

 

“Great. Thanks,” Jaime said sarcastically. He looked back in the rearview mirror to see Dany’s headlights flash on some distance behind his car, signaling to them that she was finally in her own vehicle and ready for them to leave.

 

It didn’t take Jaime very long to recall their quarrel just before she showed up to interrupt, though, and Jaime felt his fingers clench hard onto the steering wheel. He gritted his teeth, his jaw tight with anger. With Dany’s warning behind them and the need to leave sooner rather than later, Jaime didn’t have time to confront Sandor’s revelation of his involvement in risking the lives of Myrcella, Tommen, and Joffrey through good old-fashioned violence. He was forced to actually think about it. He would have preferred violence to confronting it with just words, but in that moment he didn’t have a choice.

 

In the silence that pervaded the car, Jaime finally spoke up.

 

“Tell me one thing,” he said, his fingers sweaty against the material of the wheel as they twisted around it. “Why did you do it?”

 

Jaime couldn’t bring himself to look at Sandor. His eyes were dead center on the glass in front of his face, trying desperately to focus on reflections to prevent him from glancing at the other man in the car with him. If he looked at him, there was no way he could promise there wouldn’t be more violence between them.

 

Sandor’s answer was simple. It came easily without hostility. “Same reason we’re doing this right now.”

 

His grip loosened on the steering wheel. “Sansa,” Jaime breathed out.

 

It all seemed to make sense now. In a way he almost couldn’t blame Sandor for. Beside him, Sandor didn’t speak another word. He didn’t deny or confirm it, but Jaime knew.

 

“ . . . Did someone threaten her?”

 

“Five minutes, Lannister.”

 

Jaime swore under his breath, glancing back out the rearview mirror. Headlights flooded through the back window, though they looked closer than they had been before.

 

“You know what, Sandor,” Jaime said as he pulled off of the curb and kept an eye on Dany’s vehicle in the rearview, “I’ll do you a solid. I’ll let this slide given our current circumstances and our need to work together. I’ve busted you plenty of times, and now you managed to bust me. Good work. _But_ —” Jaime held up a single finger. “I’ll only let it go on one condition.”

 

He heard that deep chest rumble again. “What?” Sandor asked below his breath.

 

Jaime fought the smirk that threatened to edge onto his lips. “You talk to Sansa,” he said. “ _And_ you tell her the truth.”

 

A deep sigh followed his answer, followed by another low-pitched rumble.

 

 


	115. Sharpen Your Knife

_* * *_

 

When Sansa slipped and fell onto the mat, her forearm broke her fall, but it was all the indication Arianne needed that practice should probably cease for the day. Arianne halted mid-step and withdrew her fencing sword, lowering it to her side in order to approach Sansa and offer the younger woman her hand.

 

Looking up at it, Sansa gratefully accepted the help and rose to stand on her own two feet again. She glanced down and brushed the dust and dirt off of her knees.

 

“Have you had enough training for one day?” asked Arianne, and Sansa simply nodded her head, pulling her fingers through her ponytail. Arianne gave a curt nod, and Sansa picked up her sword, slipping out of the ropes of the ring before returning it to the rack near the wall.

 

It wasn’t raining today, but it was gloomy. The sky was bruised and overcast, the dull luminescence washing out the colors of the world. Sansa felt very much the same way on the inside, though she hadn’t bothered to put on a mask today. It wasn’t that Sansa didn’t enjoy the company of Arianne or appreciate her lessons, but she had imagined it was going to take time before she felt normal again. Her new friends were helping her with that, as were some of her old ones. Today, she was going to spend some time with Jeyne in the evening. Sansa hadn’t seen Jeyne in weeks, and she was neglecting enough in her life. The least she could do was spend time with her friends, even if she didn’t feel like doing much talking or much of anything else.

 

Sansa returned back to the edge of the ring to sit down, hanging her legs over the side. She was sweaty and out of breath, and she wanted a moment to cool off and catch her breath. She watched as Arianne put her fencing sword away as well. It hung with the rest of them, but shone a particular golden trim that the others did not have. Sansa figured it was Arianne’s way of distinguishing her preferred one from the rest of them. She wondered if anyone else used it but Arianne.

 

Arianne took a seat beside her, dangling her legs over the edge as well. They sat in silence for some time, and then Arianna spoke.

 

“Is something on your mind, Sansa?”

 

Sansa looked down at her lap, a soft sigh escaping her lungs. “Nothing,” she said in a quiet voice, but then again, that wasn’t true. Sansa didn’t like lying to people she considered friends, so she sighed again and raised her head, staring off at the windows on the far wall. “I just can’t get this one thing out of my head.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

It wasn’t prying, but genuine concern, and so Sansa found herself answering the question. “You know, I used to always want this perfect life. Perfect boyfriend. Perfect grades. Perfect career. Perfect friends. Visiting all the perfect places with them. With everyone looking at me because I had it all.” Sansa parted her lips and drew in a deep breath, feeling her lungs ache with it. “Do you know what I want now?”

 

Arianne didn’t answer, but Sansa could see the other woman out of the corner of her eyes. Her head was tilted, curly hair tight in a ponytail as well, and she was listening in rapt silence with her hands pressed to the mat. Sansa knew the quiet meant Arianne was paying attention, a silent prompt for her to continue.

 

“I want to fade into a corner,” Sansa revealed in a fragile voice, her gaze faraway. “I want people to stop looking at me and people to stop talking about me. I want to go home and let my parents dote on me and fuss over me and treat me like I’m ten years old again, Miss Martell.” Sansa turned to Arianne with tears in her eyes and shook her head as she bit down on her bottom lip. “But I’m not ten years old anymore, and I know going away won’t solve any of my problems or change the way I feel inside. Everything is a mess, and I’m a mess, and I wish I could say it was some stupid boy or some embarrassing moment at school, but I don’t feel safe anymore when I lay down my head, and it doesn’t matter where I am.” She shook her head fervently. “I don’t feel safe—”

 

She didn’t know when the tears completely blurred her vision or when she began sobbing, but Sansa felt her temple pressing against something soft and Arianne’s arm around her shoulders, her hand cradling Sansa’s head against her. Arianne’s fingers stroked her hair, and she let Sansa cry it out without telling her to stop or that she should be strong. Sansa had never known another time aside from then when she had felt so grateful for comfort in silence without judgment or advice.

 

Arianne waited until the sobs has subsided before speaking, and Sansa remained lying against her shoulder. Arianne’s hand did not leave her hair.

 

“It is not easy for us women in this world,” Arianne told her, “and there will be times when people will try to make you feel as though you should put on a mask or a happy face and pretend as if everything is all right and nothing is wrong. In those moments I want you to remember: you have every _right_ to feel that way as well as every right to confront it. Do not suffer in silence, and do not act as if the world isn’t burning if it is. Point at it. Throw water on it, but don’t pretend you aren’t choking on the smoke, and don’t let others insist you should.”

 

Arianne sat back from Sansa, gently holding her face in the palms of her hands.

 

“If there is a fire,” Arianne insisted, “don’t pretend there isn’t. We get so good at pretense we forget we have emotions sometimes, but you’re not a doll. You’re a person, Sansa, and _you_ control what the fire burns on the inside.” Arianne shook her head, the concern she felt shining clear in her eyes. “Don’t let anyone else but yourself have that power. I don’t care who they are. No one but you should have it, and no one but you should decide what gets to stay and what gets to go.” Her thumb stroked Sansa’s cheek. “You’ve been through a lot. Maybe you don’t talk about it, maybe you do. And I know, and I _don’t_ know, but I support you. You’ve survived hell. You and your sister both, and that’s not easy, so you have every right to feel the way you do. _Every right_.”

 

Sansa’s eyes widened and watered up again, so overwhelmed she was to be told such things in such a frank manner, but she nodded in understanding as Arianne held her face. Arianne returned her arm around Sansa to hug her, and Sansa fell easily into the embrace.

 

Last year, if someone had told her she would be in this position, she would have laughed at them.

 

There was nothing funny about it in reality.

 

When Sansa composed herself, they finally stood and left the ring to make their way to the exit to leave the sparring court. At the door, Sansa turned back to give Arianne another long hug.

 

“Thank you,” she said, “from the bottom of my heart.” Sansa pulled back to give Arianne a brilliant but teary smile. Arianne returned the smile and said no more, comprehending that if Sansa was not ready to talk about it now that she would whenever she was ready.

 

They parted ways, and Sansa wiped at her eyes as she walked down the hallway alone in the opposite direction to get back to her dormitory. Before her evening with Jeyne, she had to get a shower and change. She was covered in sweat in her tank top and yoga pants.

 

Along the way, a familiar voice called out to her and stopped her mid-walk.

 

“Are you all right?”

 

Sansa whirled toward the direction of the voice. It shook her from her reverie. At the far side of the hall stood Edric, looking on with narrowed eyes that seemed to be more suspicious than actually concerned. Or maybe it was simply curiosity. Either way, she was not in the mood to talk further. “I’m fine,” Sansa lied. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

 

“You don’t look fine,” Edric called out, and he hurried to catch up with her. “Do you want someone to walk with you?”

 

Sansa stopped, whirling on Edric a second time. “Why would I want someone to walk with me?” she asked.

 

Edric looked taken aback by her question. His lips parted as he tried to shrug his shoulders casually. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Thought it might make you feel better.”

 

“Why would it make me feel better?”

 

He looked like he had something on his mind, but he was afraid to say it. Finally, he let it out. “You know,” Edric explained, and he didn’t sound like he wanted to finish his sentence, but he did, “ . . . the whole kidnapping thing.”

 

Maybe he meant well. Maybe he really did, but the way the words came out was one of the most insensitive things Sansa had ever heard uttered carelessly in her direction, so she tightened her jaw and drew her chin up, her bright eyes flaring. “I can make back to my room just fine on my own, thank you _very_ much,” Sansa snapped at him, “and I’m sure along the way I won’t get kidnapped. Unless, of course, it’s by the desire to smack you across the face.”

 

Edric’s mouth fell open, but Sansa turned around on her heels of her sneakers to stalk off. Honestly, right now, she didn’t care.

 

She wasn’t in the mood to stay and sort things out, and maybe it was rude of her, but Sansa was angry at him for making such assumptions about her. Edric barely knew her. No, she wasn’t fine. No, she wasn’t all right, but she just wanted to get back to her room without anymore interruptions for a nice warm shower to wash away all of the dirt, sweat, and immobilizing thoughts. She wanted an evening to be normal. She wanted to hang out with Jeyne.

 

When Sansa made it to her dorm, she stepped inside and shut the door, her palm lingering against it. She knew she would apologize for that later. It was too harsh of her, and she wasn’t normally so coarse. Edric was only trying to help. He was only trying to help, just like Arianne was trying to help. Sansa sighed deeply at herself, turning her back to the door and leaning against it.

 

She would make friends if only she treated people _like_ friends.

 

Swallowing past the lump in her throat, she glanced over at the small side table up against the wall. There were three picture frames on it, each housing a photo of Sansa with either her friends or her family. One photo was a big one, the entire Stark family side by side outside the front of their parents’ house in the lawn. In the background Sansa could see Jon’s black jeep in the neighbor’s driveway. She grinned at the memory it invoked, recalling how angry they had gotten and how they had yelled at Mum and Dad about it when they had gotten home to find his jeep blocking _their_ driveway.

 

With their parents standing neatly arm in arm like most couples in professional photos, the rest of them were an outright mess. Robb was in the background next to Ned and Cat, looking as if he was screaming at a rock concert. Beside him was Theon, pretending to play the guitar. Crouched in front of Robb was Jon, at level with their sister, Arya, who had one arm around Jon’s shoulders and the other at her hip. Jon was grinning normally, while Arya looked like she mentally saying _what are you gonna do about it huh_ with pursed lips. Beside her, Bran had his head thrown back, laughing out loud, because apparently Robb was tickling him with one of his hands.

 

Sansa stood on the end beside Rickon, who stood next to Bran. Her hand was on Rickon’s shoulder, and he was grinning, all teeth, while she smiled demurely at the camera. Her other hand was also on her hip like Arya, but she had posed for the picture normally like their parents, Jon, and possibly Rickon, but Rickon’s mouth and eyes were so wide that it was hard to call his expression normal.

 

 _Normal_ , Sansa thought. Her eyes watered up again, but she didn’t cry. They only stung for a moment, and then she blinked back the tears and put down the photo and looked away with her chin up. With her eyes shooting everywhere at once so she didn’t have to focus on anything in particular, Sansa finally made her way to the bathroom and shut the door behind her.

 

It was going to be long time before her life would ever get back to normal like it was in those photographs, but the photographs were there as reminders.

 

One day, it would be.

 

 


	116. Tell All Your Sins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Twelve more chapters to go, everybody. Buckle your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy ride.
> 
> Also, three days ago was the two year anniversary of when I started this fic. I can't believe it's been that long!

  _* * *_

 

When Sansa heard a knock on her front door, she looked up from her homework with a furrowed brow and a curious expression on her face. She wondered who would be visiting her at this late hour. A quick glance at the clock told her it was well past nine in the evening. Sansa pushed the book and notebook off her lap, laying them on the cushion beside her, to get up and open the door.

 

The last person she expected to see was on the other side of her door, but his face was a welcome sight for sore eyes.

 

Sansa grinned, throwing her arms around his neck as she drew him down into a hug. “Uncle Jaime,” she said happily, rubbing his back. “I haven’t seen you in so long.” Sansa drew back from him, keeping her hands on his shoulders. The smile never left her face. “How have you been? I’ve missed you.”

 

Jaime smiled back at her. “I’ve been keeping busy,” he said cryptically. “But how about you? All set up in the college life, I see.” Jaime glanced over her shoulder, casting his gaze over her dormitory. She had a roommate, but her roommate was never here, which left the place all alone to Sansa most of the time. She didn’t, of course, mind at all. The silence was peaceful.

 

Sansa raised her eyebrows, smiling at him. “Of course,” she agreed. “I have been doing better.”

 

“That’s good,” Jaime said, his voice slipping into a more somber tone. “It’s hard, getting there. I know.”

 

Maybe they hadn’t gone through the exact same experiences as each other, but it couldn’t be ignored that both of them had their lives thrown off track in horrible ways. Jaime would understand more than anyone what she was going through, which only struck Sansa as odd that she hadn’t tried to talk to him about it. The funny way in which people treated her now or even looked at her. He dealt with a similar burden, and he would know what that was like.

 

Sansa pushed the idea aside, forcing a smile for him. Jaime had enough burdens on his shoulders. He didn’t deserve to have hers thrust upon him as well. There were bags under his eyes, and he was skinnier than usual. He was clean-shaven again, but the prickle of stubble was coming already through.

 

“Look, Sansa,” Jaime suddenly said, pulling her out of her reverie. His hands fell on her shoulders, and his expression turned serious. “I’ve come here for a reason tonight, and it’s a very important, very delicate matter.” He waited for an instant, letting the words sink in as if to give Sansa plenty of time to grasp them. “Do you think you can listen to me?”

 

Sansa nodded. “Of course.”

 

Jaime let out a quiet exhalation through his nose. “Okay, because someone else is here to see you. What he needs to tell you, it’s very important, and I need you to listen. I won’t go anywhere. I’ll be right here beside you, and you are perfectly safe right here. Do you understand?”

 

Sansa felt her throat go dry, but she nodded her head. “I understand,” she said in a whisper.

 

Jaime stared her in the eyes for a moment. He seemed to be weighing the issue, and then he removed his hands from her shoulders and drew back from her. Her eyes immediately were drawn towards the hallway beyond her dormitory door. It was dark and cast with shadows, but a figure came forward from that darkness with a slow gait. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and Sansa’s heart began to beat very fast. Before he even reached the light, she _knew_ who it was. Sansa knew it in her heart.

 

Sandor slowly drew to a halt some six feet away. He seemed too terrified to come any closer to her, preferring to maintain a fair distance between them rather than invading her personal space. Sansa was glad for it. She couldn’t predict what sort of reaction she would have if he came any closer than that. Not right now, not so soon into seeing him again after what happened between them the last time she was alone in a room with him.

 

However, she wasn’t alone in a room with him. Jaime was here, and Sansa knew he wouldn’t let any harm come to her. Let the papers say what they would, Jaime was honorable in his own way, and he was like family to her.

 

Sansa raised her chin, her gaze proud and unshaken. In the silence she could feel the tension in her bones, how they wanted to rattle in their unsteadiness, but not in front of him. Not after what he did to her.

 

“Sansa,” Sandor rasped, his throat dry. He gulped. “I know I’m probably the last person you expected to see, but I’m not here to cause you pain. I have to explain something to you. Something I should have explained to you from the beginning instead of being a coward, the coward I know I am. I made you bear the burden when I should have shouldered it myself, and for that, I’m sorry. No word can fix what I’ve done, but I had to tell you that. I had to tell you I’m sorry.”

 

Sansa didn’t say anything in response, but she crossed her arms over her chest as she regarded him coldly. She wasn’t going to tell Sandor _apology accepted_ because she didn’t know if she accepted it yet. She didn’t know if she could forgive him yet. It all depended on why he did it in the first place. Even then, she promised nothing to him in return.

 

“Why did you do it, then?” Sansa asked, her chin up and unafraid. “Give me one good reason why your apology should mean anything to me at all.”

 

“I thought,” Sandor began slowly, casting his gaze to Jaime with an unsure glint in his eyes, “I was protecting you—but like I said, it was a coward’s way of doing it.”

 

“How does holding a knife to my throat protect me?” she demanded.

 

Sandor’s eyes flitted to Jaime again. “From Cersei Lannister.”

 

Sansa faltered in her surety, her arms coming unfolded. “What?”

 

Sandor returned his dark eyes to her. They seemed more alive, then, like maybe in some small way he had gotten through to her. “That’s why Jaime is here with me, Sansa. He can back up what I’m saying, so it doesn’t sound like the ravings of a mad dog.” His eyes, however sharp, grew softer and almost pleading. “That knife I held to your throat was meant to make Cersei Lannister believe you were nothing to me. I needed her to believe that, so she’d leave you in peace. You see, she wants to get to me. To get to my boss, and she thinks you’re the key. I don’t think she ever stopped believing it, even after I did threaten your life. Like a fool, I thought if she believed I didn’t care for your life, she’d leave you alone. I knew she’d come snooping around you, asking questions. That’s what she does.” His eyes lifted to Jaime again, looking uncertain once more. “That’s what we’ve been doing together, Sansa, trying to stop Cersei. She’s got it in her head that she can take up the mantle of their father. Run his business the way he used to do it, and she’s gonna burn down the whole city to do it, if she has to. That’s what I was trying to protect you from, Sansa. It’s not over yet. Tywin’s gone, but it’s not over yet.”

 

Sansa felt a ragged breath enter her lungs through her lips. Her arms came back up to hug her middle, and she turned to Jaime, looking for confirmation on all of this, though none of her truly doubted it. “Is it true, Uncle Jaime?”

 

Jaime’s cheeks were hollow as he slowly nodded his head. “Yes, it’s true, Sansa.” He swallowed past his reluctance to admit the next few words. “My sister wants to rule this city, and she’ll hurt you to do it.”

 

“Is that why you came with Sandor?” Sansa inquired further, facing Jaime fully. “Are you trying to bring down your sister?”

 

Jaime glanced over her shoulder at Sandor, slowly nodding his head as he bit his bottom lip. “Yes,” Jaime admitted, meeting her eyes again. “I am trying to help Sandor bring down my sister.”

 

Sansa no longer felt any fear. Something felt clear all of a sudden, the fog lifting from her mind and leaving behind a sharp clarity in its place. “Why?” she asked.

 

Jaime furrowed his brow in confusion at her. “What do you mean, ‘ _why_?’”

 

“She’s your sister,” Sansa said. “Your twin. Why? Why turn on her?”

 

Jaime pushed himself off of the wall where he was reclining to approach Sansa in a few strides. “Why try to stop her from hurting a girl, an _innocent_ girl, because she’s so obsessed with power that she doesn’t care how many lives she ruins just to get it?” he asked, stopping in front of her. Jaime placed both of his hands on Sansa’s shoulders. “She can go to hell, Sansa, and I’ll send her there myself.” His hand touched the top of her head, reminiscent of how he did with them with her and her siblings when they were all much younger. “I made a vow a very long time ago to your mother,” Jaime said, “and I intend to keep it.”

 

Sansa felt her tough façade cracking at his words, and her eyes watered up with a soft sting. As her vision blurred, she wrapped her arms about his neck to pull him in for a hug. Jaime wrapped his arms around her as well, and the hug lasted a little while. At least until her eyes stopped stinging, and then she pulled away from him to wipe them dry. Sansa gazed over her shoulder at Sandor before she turned back to Jaime.

 

“Uncle Jaime,” she asked hesitantly, “can I have a moment alone with Sandor?”

 

Jaime looked over her at the other man. Slowly, he nodded his head. “Of course,” he answered, patting her shoulder. “I’ll be nearby.” With that, he withdrew from her and headed down the hallway, turning a corner to give them some privacy.

 

Sansa wasn’t sure if she was this strong yet, but she had to at least try. She faced Sandor in the darkness of the hallway, both of them cast in a blue glow from the open windows. It was a beautiful night out, and the clear was clear. If she looked out the window, Sansa could see the moon and the stars sprinkled above the tree tops. Below them, the grounds were drawn with winding sidewalks and littered with empty benches.

 

Across from her, Sandor stood as still as a statue until he shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He was nervous, Sansa realized, far more nervous than her. It gave her some courage to approach him, her chin still raised high. It wasn’t for pride, though, but it was to look him in the eyes. Sansa had been petty once, but she wasn’t like that anymore. She wanted to look him in the eyes when she spoke to him. After all, she was tall, but he was still taller.

 

“I accept your apology,” Sansa told him firmly, “but at the same time, that does not mean I’ve forgiven you. I acknowledge it, as well as thank you for it, but if you think for one second that this changes anything between us, it doesn’t.”

 

“I don’t think that,” Sandor answered in a quiet voice. “I didn’t say it in hopes of getting on your good side, Sansa. I only said it because you deserved to hear it, and I deserve whatever you have to say to me. I know that. I’m no fool.”

 

Sansa lifted her chin a little higher, though she felt her heart warm at his words. It would take time for her to trust Sandor again after what he did to her, but she was willing to be friendly with him, kind to him, especially if he was trying now beside Jaime to do everything within their power to protect her. “Does this mean Cersei will send someone after me?” Sansa asked him, fearing his answer to that question. “Does this mean I’m still not safe?”

 

Slowly, Sandor shook his head. “No,” he rasped, “you’re still not safe, but we’re watching you. Trying our best to keep you safe. We thought—Jaime and I—after talking with you that we might ask you how you felt about having Brienne with you. It won’t look suspicious if she’s spending time with you, not after all you’ve been through. You and her go back, after all.”

 

“Of course,” Sansa agreed, “I would feel safer with her around.” She nodded her head again, and then she admitted something to Sandor that she never expected she would ever admit to him, not so soon. Not so suddenly, but the words came out, anyway, and she couldn’t stop them.

 

“You know, it’s strange,” Sansa revealed, her eyes set on a fixed point just past his shoulder. They remained unblinking for a moment. “How lately I haven’t felt safe, no matter where I go. Like something dark was just barely lingering around the corner, waiting for me.” She looked up at Sandor, her eyes softening as a chill crept down her spine and caused her to wrap her arms around herself again. She hugged herself tighter this time, though she wasn’t fully aware of it. “And yet, it wasn’t you that made me feel that way, Sandor. I have been angry with you, yes, but something told me that it wasn’t you that night with the knife. It was, but it wasn’t, and I knew it.”

 

Hot tears swelled over her vision, and Sansa saw a blur of her face reflected back to her in Sandor’s eyes.

 

“Yet I’ve still been afraid, and I didn’t know of what, and now I know.” Gripping her arms hard enough to dig her nails into the skin, Sansa felt herself shake. “But I felt it. Something was wrong, and I felt it, I knew, somehow I _knew_ —”

 

Even as she shook, Sandor kept his distance. His hands clenched at his sides, and his eyes swelled with pain as well to match hers, but he kept his hands to himself and didn’t make a move to touch her. “I’m sorry, Sansa,” he told her, and Sansa knew he meant it with every fiber of his being.

 

Suddenly, she was tired of being strong. For a just moment, she was so tired of being this strong. Sansa gazed up at his face, searching for something to tell her not to trust him, but there was no such warning. No lie in his eyes, and she knew. She knew with Jaime here. She knew with Cersei’s seemingly innocuous questions brought up about her private life. She knew with the bag of her clothes, neatly packed for her and left behind in her room, a feat no drunken man could have accomplished in a haze of madness. There were little clues dropped everywhere along the way, and she knew. She wasn’t stupid.

 

It didn’t mean anything significant, what transpired next between them. It didn’t mean Sansa had forgiven him. It didn’t mean they would get back together, but she still reached forward to wrap her arms around his waist and pull Sandor into a hug. It was a gentle hug. There wasn’t a tight clutch to her arms, but Sansa did rest her head against his chest. For a moment, she let herself have this one thing.

 

A long pause lingered between her arms around his waist and her head upon his chest before Sandor found the strength to raise his arms. He didn’t quite hug her, but he did lightly place his hands upon her back. He thrummed with fear. Sansa could feel it, but she said nothing about it.

 

When she pulled away from him, their hands fell away at the same time. Sandor stared back, looking the most lost as she had ever seen him.

 

Sansa took a step back to return the comfortable distance between them. “Thank you,” she told him, trying to keep a straight voice. “For your honesty, Sandor. I would like to spend some time with Brienne, if you could arrange it.” She smiled at him, and then she turned away.

 

It took everything within her to shut the door without ever looking back.

 

 


	117. It's Worth Two Lions

  _* * *_

 

Arya knew she shouldn’t have been here, but here she was, and it was for a good reason. If she kept telling herself that enough times in a row, she figured, sooner or later she would begin to believe it.

 

She knew the way to Maegor’s Holdfast like the back of her hand by now. It was daylight, so the place looked different. It always did. The lights were off, and the place was dead. The only cars present lingered in the back, but Arya knew one of them had to have belonged to Renly Baratheon.

 

Walking up to the front door in broad daylight and knocking was easier than it should have been. Arya strolled up and rapped her knuckles against it like she owned the place herself, and the door opened almost instantly to her surprise. It was the only surprise so far.

 

“Who are you, kid?” the guard asked her, an annoyed but unsuspicious look on his face.

 

“Arya Stark,” she answered with finality, raising her chin in defiance. “I’m here to see Renly Baratheon. He knows who I am.”

 

The command brought another unexpected reaction. He lifted his eyebrows like he had been told to anticipate such a visitor with this name. Backing away from the door, he held it open for her. “Right this way,” he said.

 

 _Surprise number two_ , Arya chalked up mentally, glancing around the empty foyer that led to a bar on the left and a dead dance floor in front of her, curving around to the right. None of the strobe lights were on, but the basic lamps above were lit. A handful of workers were cleaning the place up, setting it up for tonight.

 

“Hold your arms out,” he said. “I have to pat you down.”

 

Arya knew the drill by now, so she complied and waited for him to pat her down to her ankles, checking her for concealed weapons. When the man was done, he led her past all the workers down a familiar path to Renly’s office in the back of the club.

 

Once they were there, he knocked on the door.

 

“Yes?” Renly called from within.

 

“Sir, Arya Stark is here to see you.”

 

“Oh, send her in,” Renly replied in his usual chipper tone, and the guard opened the door to his office and stepped out of the way for her to make her way inside. Arya cast her eyes upward at the guard, staring for a moment, before she moved slowly into Renly’s office and the door closed behind her in relative silence.

 

She expected a resounding _boom_ to go with the pounding of her heart. It didn’t come, though.

 

Renly was over by one of the refreshment tables against the right wall, picking at berries and eating them. “Come on in, Arya. Take a seat. You’re always welcome here, you know that,” he said, sounding kind and unthreatening, but Arya knew what he was capable of and being around him was starting to terrify her.

 

“Is this the girl?” another voice said from the left of the room, startling Arya. She glanced over and caught sight of a dark-skinned woman with short cut hair and a beautiful but deadly smile. The woman approached her with careful steps, eyes appraising what she saw. “She’s short and skinny, but that’s often the advantage for speed and precision.”

 

“Sarella, please,” Renly scolded, “don’t scare the girl.”

 

“Who’s she?” Arya demanded, turning quickly back to Renly as she took a step away from the woman.

 

“She’s my colleague,” Renly answered with a shrug, crossing the room to them. “A little blunt, but trustworthy beyond compare.”

 

“What about me?” snapped a voice across the room.

 

Arya swung her head towards it. _Surprise number three_ , she counted. There was a woman sitting in a chair against the back wall, a pair of crutches leaning against the armrest. Her eyes smoldered with contained anger, her long black hair pulled up in a ponytail.

 

“Nymeria, please, not you too,” Renly scoffed. “At this rate, the both of you will scare off our new guest. She’s our friend, and I would prefer to keep it that way, so if you don’t mind . . . ” He looked pointed at both Nymeria and Sarella. Sarella just smiled, but Nymeria glowered with intensity and looked away.

 

Renly turned back to Arya. “You’ll have to forgive Nymeria. She was in a terrible accident a few months ago. Was in the hospital for _months_. Had to wear a brace around her neck, and once they got her walking again, she had to use crutches. Which, as you can see, she still needs. With the fall she took, she’s lucky she’s not permanently disabled.”

 

Arya stared at Nymeria as the woman ignored the conversation about her. Her gut told her more than that had happened to the woman, but she wasn’t about to pry in her situation.

 

Arya turned to Renly. “What do you want from me?”

 

Renly’s expression turned curious, his head tilting left. “All business, no play,” he said. “Very well. I need your help.”

 

“With what?”

 

Renly held up a finger, wagging it back and forth like she was being an unruly child. “Uh-uh, that’s not how it works, Arya. You don’t get details until I get an agreement. That’s how this works.”

 

“How can I agree to it if I don’t know what it is?” Arya asked.

 

“If you have to know what it is before you agree to it, then this isn’t the place for you, Arya.” Renly smiled softly at her, a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, and Arya felt her insides boiling in response.

 

“Fine,” she spat out, “I agree. Now, what is it?”

 

Renly was taken by surprise with her answer. He glanced at Sarella, who seemed equally amused by it. He aimed his smile back on Arya. “I like this new version of you,” he said, pointing at her. He lowered his arm. “It’s quite simple. There is going to be a big banquet next week. The Lannisters, the Baratheons, the Starks . . . everyone will be there. I’ll need you to deliver a message for me at a designated time.”

 

Arya narrowed her eyes. “That’s it? A message? What kind of message?”

 

“Questions are good, Arya, to a point,” Renly replied with a stern tone. “At some point, you need to realize when they are inappropriate.”

 

Arya gave a stern look right back. She had to show him she wasn’t afraid of him, even though that was stupid. She was afraid of him, which made this whole thing that much more dangerous. “Do I get the message now?”

 

“No,” Renly said, walking away from her. He made his way to his desk. “You’ll get the message at the banquet.”

 

Arya turned to keep her eyes on him, holding out her arms in confusion. “How am I supposed to know where to get it from?”

 

Renly sat down in his chair, glancing up at her. “Why, Sarella here. She’ll give it to you. When she gives it to you, you deliver it to where she tells you to deliver it.”

 

Arya looked at Sarella, who was still smiling a few feet away with her hand on her hip. “Is that why she’s here today?”

 

Renly waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, she’s always here. Like I said, she’s my colleague. We’re partners in crime.” He grinned at his own witty remark. “Tell me, Arya, does that sound like something you can do?”

 

Arya felt herself hesitating. “Is it instructions to kill someone?”

 

At her inquiry, everyone in the room burst into laughter. Even Nymeria couldn’t hold it in despite her sour disposition, howling from across the office. Arya felt her face burning hot from embarrassment, but what else seemed most likely with a group such as this? Something inside of Arya told her she couldn’t trust Sarella and Nymeria. Not necessarily that they were untrustworthy or disloyal, but Arya knew both of them were dangerous people.

 

She felt it in her bones just being in the same room as them. They were violent, skilled women in areas of expertise that Arya couldn’t even begin to fathom.

 

Once Renly calmed down, he caught her gaze from over his desk. There was still a ghost of a smile across his lips. “Can I expect to see you at the banquet, Arya? Surely, your family will be there and you’ll attend with them?”

 

The inquiry sounded innocent enough, but Arya knew he just wanted her to play her part.

 

“Yes,” Arya said with finality, and Renly’s smile reached his eyes this time. He picked up a glass of champagne sitting on his desk, holding it up as if in a toast.

 

“Wonderful,” he said, grinning. “It will be an event to remember for a lifetime.”

 

 


	118. A Little Unsteady

_* * *_

 

Sansa’s heart felt lighter than it ever had in what seemed like ages, but it also still felt as though something was wrong. In that particular moment when the feeling swept over her, she was in the middle of walking with Edric back to her dorm. It was something that had become a bit of a habit for her, to ask him to accompany her whenever she was alone because she didn’t feel safe otherwise. Sometimes Sansa had some of her closer friends with her, and in other moments she had the watchful Brienne never too far from her side, but when she didn’t have either of those, she at least had Edric to keep her company.

 

He was a kind boy—if a bit long-winded when he spoke because he could go on forever until she interrupted him. Sansa paused mid-step just then, cutting off Edric in the middle of his sentence as he went on about something that happened last week between him and the youngest Tarly boy in a school match. “Edric,” she said, turning to face him, “do you think it’s possible to forgive someone for something wrong they’ve done to you? Even when it shouldn’t be forgivable?”

 

Edric narrowed his eyes, realizing the shift in the conversation. “Are we talking about Tarly now, or you?” he asked.

 

Sansa flushed a little. “Me,” she admitted.

 

Edric sighed, and they began walking again. “All right, I’ll humor,” he said. “I think it’s possible. People do mean things, and they say mean things, but they don’t always _mean_ it. Sometimes they’re just hurt. Or scared. People react strangely when they’re hurt or scared. It doesn’t mean they don’t care anymore.” He turned to grin at her. “There. I’ve given my answer. Now, what are we talking about?”

 

“Someone I don’t know if I should trust again . . . ”

 

“Well, here I thought we were talking about forgiveness,” Edric added with some cheek. “Forgiveness and trust aren’t the same thing, you know.”

 

“I _know_ ,” Sansa defended herself. “I just . . . ” She paused again, staring ahead at nothing in particular. It all looked the same when her eyes felt blurry. “I don’t know if I should forgive, or trust, or talk to him ever again.”

 

“Ah,” Edric replied with an air of knowing. “We’re talking about a boy.”

 

“A man,” Sansa corrected.

 

“Even worse,” Edric shot back. “A man should know better than to make you feel this way in the first place. At least a boy has an excuse of being ignorant and uneducated—”

 

“—And then he should _learn_ ,” Sansa fired back with ire in her tone.

 

“Hey, I’m not the one on trial here. I’m just trying to help you find the answer you’re not accepting from yourself.”

 

The trip took a sudden turn left as Edric led Sansa to one of the many balconies on the grounds instead of right toward the rooms, opening one of the glass paned doors for her to allow them to walk outside. The air was fresh and crisp with a chill that even her coat and gloves weren’t enough to keep it at bay, but the chill was clearing and the bite of it reminded her that even beautiful things like snow could be cruel when they wanted to be.

 

It wasn’t snowing yet, but it would be in a few months. It was coming early this year. She had heard it said somewhere else already. She wished it would come even sooner than that.

 

Edric slung his bag onto a rickety table, the noise shocking Sansa back to reality as he turned to face her. He sat down on the edge next to his bag. “Why does this bloke matter to you?” he asked, shrugging his shoulders. “If you’re so angry at him, why bother at all?”

 

“I’m not angry,” Sansa answered quietly, surely. She knew that wasn’t how she felt anymore. “I’m just . . . tired.” Sansa took a step forward, placing her books on the table as well. “Tired of diverging roads in a direction that doesn’t feel like the right one, but it’s the one everyone tells me to take.” She found herself plopping down into a chair, the metal scraping the concrete below their feet. “Somehow it seems they’re all wrong, but how could they be?”

 

Edric’s initial silence gave way to a softer tone from him. “Your family?”

 

“I suppose,” Sansa answered. “Family. Friends. What all of the sensible people say, of course.”

 

“Books, television, songs on the radio,” Edric chimed in.

 

“No,” Sansa replied, shaking her head. “Sometimes they cheer for the other half more than anything. A happy ending. Defying all odds. You know, in a classic comedy, everything goes wrong before it can go right. In a tragedy, however, everything is good until it goes bad, and then it just ends that way.”

 

Silence befell them for a few minutes. Sansa saw her breath plume before her lips like smoke as Edric’s low breathing could be heard beside her because it was so quiet. “Forgiveness is not the same as trust,” Edric finally answered her. “You forgive someone for your own well-being and happiness. That’s how it should be, anyway. Despite what some people say, it has nothing to do with them. It’s all about you. That’s the easy step, if you let it. Trust, though, that’s a two way street that benefits or harms both people, depending on the situation. Forgive, if you feel it’s the right thing to do for you, but trust? Give that one time to sort itself out, and don’t hand it over immediately. That’s my advice, anyway.”

 

Sansa felt a smile tug at the corner of her mouth. “You’re quite young to talk that way, aren’t you?”

 

Edric smiled back at her. “Blame my mum for that one,” he said. “She had a lot to learn herself thanks to my dad. I guess she taught the important stuff to me while she had the chance.”

 

Sansa grinned, reaching out to pat his hand with her mitt. “She did good, then.”

 

He sighed again, something that sounded like maybe they were a little too close for comfort, and hopped off the table. “Come on,” Edric told her, picking up his bag and slinging it back over his shoulder. “Let’s get you safe and sound back to where home is for now.”

 

With a little smile back in place, Sansa agreed and gathered herself to head back inside. The warmth of the hall surrounded them upon reentry, and the darkness beyond the windows was oddly comforting this time of year. She said goodbye to Edric at the door and flicked on the light, dropping her things into the nearest chair and heading further in the room.

 

It was quiet, and she was thankful for that, but a rustle caught her attention, and before Sansa could say anything, Arya popped out from around a corner where she had been leaning out of sight and stared straight at Sansa.

 

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Arya exhaled, sounding a little out of breath despite her stillness.

 

The little taut pull of fear had disappeared as soon as Sansa had seen her sister’s face, and she smiled in Arya’s direction before walking over to her and wrapping her arms around her smaller frame. After all, she had left a key to her dormitory in Arya’s bedroom with a note explaining that Arya should come and visit her sometime whenever she had the chance. “I see you’ve made use of my key,” she told her younger sister with a happy sigh. They let go of each other, but Sansa’s hands remained on her sister’s arms. “I’m so glad to see you, Arya. I have missed you so much.”

 

Arya looked confounded by the statement. “I’m still here,” she replied flatly.

 

“I know,” Sansa said, “but you know what I mean. I _miss_ you. I miss you being my sister. I miss us hanging out. I miss us spending time together, doing things together.” Sansa shrugged, her mind too tired to compile a list at this moment. “I miss you.”

 

What began as a blankness on her sister’s face soon became a well of emotion, and Arya blurted out the next bit in such a rush that Sansa could barely keep up with the outpour of information. “Cersei Lannister is out to get you. She’s taken over after Tywin Lannister’s death, and she means to take his place. She’s the real _reason_ you were kidnapped. She’s the real reason _I_ was kidnapped, but she was after you all along, not me, and they just got me by accident—”

 

Sansa gripped her sister’s shoulders tightly, concern filling her up by the minute with a panic. “Wait, Arya, where did you hear all this? Who told you this?”

 

Arya exhaled a shaky breath. “You don’t seem surprised.”

 

“No,” Sansa answered quietly, letting go of Arya. “I’m not.” She looked down before she took a deep breath, trying to calm her own nerves as she wondered just how Arya came by all of this information. “Uncle Jaime already told me . . . along with Sandor. And Brienne. They were trying to warn me, so I could look out for myself as they tried to—”

 

Arya narrowed her eyes with disbelief. When she spoke, her voice rose with anger. “If they knew, why didn’t they say anything before now? Why didn’t they tell me? Why didn’t they tell our _parents_?”

 

“That’s not fair,” Sansa shot back in their defense. They weren’t here to defend themselves. While she understood Arya’s fury, sometimes it wasn’t as simple as all that. “Going against people like that isn’t as simple as pointing a finger and thinking that justice will be served when corrupt people control nearly every aspect of this city—”

 

“Oh yeah?” Arya fired back. “And when did you become such an expert?”

 

“When did _you_?” Sansa countered hotly.

 

It wasn’t like the two of them to fight like this. Not since they were children, anyway, when things were easier for them to disagree upon and the world was more black and white. So much grey tinged everything now. Both of them had their fair share of demons to carry with them to the grave, but Arya’s demons were not Sansa’s demons, and they were dealing with them differently—separately, when they should have been dealing with them together. That was the purpose of the key. To bring them back to one another, to talk about things and find a common ground to stand on together. To understand each other’s burdens instead of drowning in their own alone.

 

It was just a key, but it was so much more than that.

 

As soon as she had spoken to Arya in such a way, though, a full of shame came after it. “Please, Arya, I’m sorry—” Sansa tried to reach out to Arya again, but her sister pulled away.

 

“I found out from Renly Baratheon,” Arya admitted, her voice softer than before.

 

Sansa remained silent for a moment before speaking, too scared of pushing her sister away any more than she already had. “How?” she finally asked. “How do you know him?”

 

“Never mind that, it’s not important,” Arya said in another rush. “All I know is that I heard it from him, and he knows everything, doesn’t he? He knows a lot more than Sandor or Uncle Jaime or anyone else for that matter. Maybe Uncle Jaime wouldn’t have ended up losing everything if he knew the things that Renly Baratheon knew, and maybe Sandor wouldn’t be where he is now if he knew half the things that Renly Baratheon knew.” Arya drew in an unsteady breath, visibly worn down inside and out. Sansa could see it all. The toll everything had taken on her little sister. It was as clear as the bottom of a fountain on a sunny summer day. Every bad penny, corroding in plain sight. “They’re all fools.”

 

Sansa drew it all in with a ladylike grace their mother had taught her. After all, she knew why her sister was here. Arya cared about her, too. She was worried about Sansa’s safety and welfare. That was all. There was no great war here to be had between them. Arya was just here to see things through for Sansa.

 

The words were just getting in the way.

 

Sitting down in the closest chair, Sansa raised her chin to look up at her sister. In her mind there was only one way to answer Arya, so she put petty discrepancies aside and said it. “What should I do?” she asked.

 

Unexpectedly, Arya’s tough facade broke down. Shoulders heaving, her cheeks became a mess of hot tears as every other question that could be asked went away. “I don’t know,” Arya tried to speak beyond the heaves. “I don’t know—I don’t know—”

 

Rising up immediately, Sansa gathered her baby sister into her arms and held her close. All the tears were soaked into her coat, every cry muffled by it, and a hot sensation stung with all too much familiarity in Sansa’s own eyes as she listened to her sister break down and felt all of it along with her. They shook together, both crying eventually, and Sansa did not want to let her go. She dreaded the moment it had to happen. Where they were return to once it was all over and the moment had passed them by.

 

It seemed as if it would not.

 

Long after they had cried until their eyes were red, puffy, and swollen and their cheeks were sticky with salt, they stood there holding each other in a loose hug. It felt as though their feet were swaying out of their own accord, and Sansa let a hand pass over her sister’s hair.

 

“I don’t know what to do either,” Sansa admitted in a whisper. “We’re just girls, you and I. We’re not kings and queens.” Her hand passed over Arya’s hair again. “It seems as if we’re just pawns in other people’s games.”

 

“I don’t want to be somebody else’s pawn,” Arya whispered back. Sansa heard her sister’s older self in that comment, a hint of steel glinting beneath the surface. Arya wasn’t broken. She was just lost, and it wasn’t easy finding her way home after all of the horrifying things they had been through in such a short span of time. At least they were trying, though.

 

At least Arya was trying, too.

 

Sansa tightened her hold on Arya. “I don’t want to be either,” she said. “We’ll look out for each other, you and I, won’t we? Promise me we will.”

 

“I will,” Arya whispered so low Sansa almost didn’t hear it.

 

“I will, too,” Sansa answered back.

 

She could only pray the both of them would be enough should nothing else in the world live up to the task, but Sansa also knew deep down it would never be that easy.


	119. Muddy Waters

_* * *_

 

With weary eyes cast over the hoard of people around her, Arya realized from her table away from them all that the celebration banquet prepared for their sendoff was a precious waste of her time. She had decided so about an hour ago. Looking down at her phone, Arya noticed it had been yet another thirty-six minutes since that moment. A deep sigh filled her, and she placed her chin in a palm to watch the procession of chatting, smiling faces make dizzying circles of laughter in their cups.

 

Her phone beeped again. The fifth time since she ignored it. She knew who it was, after all. Gendry had been trying to get a hold of her because he had some important news to tell her, and Arya knew what that news was. He was leaving. It was probably a job offer or something like that. Better opportunities than what he had here, she assumed, and so he was leaving and he was trying to tell her, but she already knew. It was pointless to drag it out.

 

Gendry had already tried to explain it to her once, but before he could get all of the words out, Arya had shut him down and stormed off in their argument. He was leaving her. That was all there was to it, and she didn’t need him trying to justify it to her, so she ran off instead of facing it. It was better this way.

 

Amidst a crowd of faces she barely recognized unless in passing, Arya felt as if she could blend in as a nobody until it was all over. At least until Sarella came by with her stupid message and got that over with, too. A little mystery in her day wasn’t such a bad thing, but Arya was eager to be done with it and go home. She had given her word, not that it meant much to who she gave it to, but it was the one thing she wanted to see through except for helping her sister—who was the only person within perfect eyesight of where Arya was sitting.

 

Sansa was actually smiling for once, talking to a friend her age, Arya assumed. A pretty girl with dark hair, but her face wasn’t visible from here.

 

Doubtfully, anything would happen in this open of a space. In front of so many people, so Arya wasn’t really worried about all that. Cersei Lannister was here, of course, but so were so many other people. Too many people to do anything drastic in front of them all. Cersei Lannister wouldn’t dare try such a thing as go after her sister in public.

 

It was the out of public eye part that Arya worried about most.

 

Putting her mind so solely on Sansa allowed Arya to ignore her own problems, at least for now, which was good enough.

 

What she didn’t expect, however, was a visitor just for herself at this celebration.

 

Arya looked up from her cup and nearly choked on her drink. Gendry stood in front of her, looking pained with his hands in tight-gripped knuckles at his sides. His eyes had bags under them as if he hadn’t slept since she ran away from him and refused to listen to what he had to say. It was fair that she should feel guilty about that, but not at this time. This was the worst time for him to show up, but Arya should have known he might try to come up here to find her. He knew her whole family would be here tonight, and what a better way to catch her so she wouldn’t make a scene than in a crowd of a bunch of people having a good time.

 

Gendry pulled out a chair and sat down across from her, using a little more force than he needed to. His face was grim, and he looked thinner. Had he been eating properly? The pang of guilt in her chest grew in size until it felt as if drawing in breath was hurting, and Arya finally looked away from him.

 

“Why are you here?” she asked with great difficulty. Arya was upset, and rightly so, after what had transpired between them the last time.

 

“So,” Gendry bit out, “is this how we’re to end things? With you not even talking to me or saying goodbye?”

 

Arya’s jaw clenched tight. “It was your decision, not mine.”

 

“Bull _shit_ ,” Gendry snapped. “I’m not trying to leave you, Arya, and if you would just _listen_ to me, you’d figure that out. But no, it’s all about you, isn’t it? You’re just looking for an excuse to get rid of me, is that it?”

 

Her mouth fell open, and she looked him straight in the eyes. It wasn’t hard to do that after what he had just said to her. “How could you say that?”

 

Gendry looked nothing like himself in that moment. He was more than just upset over a spilled cup of tea. None of his usual mirth around her was in him right now. He was empty. He looked like a man trying to start over with nothing good behind him to encourage him to go forward, only that he had to go unless he planned on lying down and giving up and he wasn’t quite ready to do that yet. “You said it,” he told her, a tinge of bitterness in his voice. “You’ve been saying it since I’ve tried to talk to you about the good news.”

 

“What good news?” Arya snapped back. “You’re leaving. How’s that good?”

 

Gendry had never looked so sad as he did in that moment. “I thought you’d be happy for me, Arya. I’ve found something. Something good. I can be more than what I am, but you don’t care about that, do you?”

 

She couldn’t meet his eyes. “I never said I didn’t care.”

 

Gendry slumped back in his chair. “And I never said we couldn’t see each other, Arya. You read that in between the lines yourself. It’s only in the next town over, not far at all. We can still see each other until—”

 

“Weekends,” Arya interrupted, her whisper small and miserable in response. “If time is generous. It won’t work out, you know.”

 

“That’s not fair. We haven’t even tried—”

 

Arya stood up suddenly, the table shaking as she pushed on it. “I’ve got to go—”

 

“Arya!”

 

She hurried off into the crowd until her heart was pounding and fear told her she hadn’t lost him, so she looked back, but he was gone. Unfamiliar faces gave way to more unfamiliar faces, and Arya finally stopped to catch her breath. She bent halfway over, gathering some attention to herself, but no one actually stopped to ask her if she was all right. They just stared at her like she was crazy. _Crazy_. Arya looked up and cast her gaze over the crowd. Too bad she wasn’t tall enough to see over any of them, but she realized a toast was going on because everybody had ceased chatting and turned their heads toward a spectacle near the pavilion.

 

However, the noise level around her made it impossible to hear what was going on, and a voice spoke up near her ear that made every nerve in her body jump away from it.

 

“Nice party, huh?” Sarella inquired, a smirk curling her lips. She turned to Arya, eyes catching the gleam of the lights above them. She wore a fine shawl wrapped around her head that was tied to a loose point under her chin, and it matched her loose-fitting ivory outfit. She was picturesque image of innocence if it weren’t for the look on her face.

 

“Y—yes,” Arya stammered, though it was unwillingly. She didn’t want to look like a fool in front of Sarella, but it was too late now. The older woman made her nervous, and for good reasons. “I mean, of course.”

 

Sarella nudged Arya’s arm with her own in a manner that attempted playfulness. “Well, go tell Margaery congratulations,” she said with a smile.

 

A cold trickled down Arya’s spine, setting her teeth on edge, but she ignored it. “That’s it? Tell her ‘congratulations’?” She turned to Sarella. “ _That’s_ the message I’m meant to deliver?”

 

“What?” Sarella asked, pulling back from her. “Too big for your world?” With an amused smirk, she slipped away and disappeared into the bodies. Arya watched her, but she didn’t follow.

 

She glanced back up at the pavilion and noticed Margaery was on it, giving an animated speech and looking radiant in the attempt. Arya figured by the time she reached her, Margaery would be off of the pavilion and it would be someone else’s turn to speak. At least she wouldn’t have to do it in front of other people to witness it.

 

Despite any misgivings she may have had in her heart, Arya put one foot in front of the other and made her way through the crowd towards the pavilion with a renewed sense of determination.

 

She was right, of course. As soon as she got within a few yards of the exhibition, the crowd began to clap and Margaery gave a little curtsey worthy of an award. With a kiss blown into the group before her, Margaery jaunted off the stage and down into a flurry of people to meet her. Arya pushed through the people until she found herself face to face with Sansa’s former best friend. Margaery paused in step before her, staring straight at Arya as if she had expected this moment to come. “Yes?” Margaery inquired, tilting her head in feigned innocence that Arya could see through it, even if those around them didn’t notice.

 

“Congratulations,” Arya said, the word sounding hollow, but Margaery grinned at her as if they had been best friends all along and she couldn’t have said it any better. Pulling Arya into a little hug, Margaery released her quickly and kissed both of her cheeks.

 

“Thank you,” she crooned with a suspicious gleam in her eyes, one that matched Sarella’s before her, before bounding off towards others behind Arya to hug and kiss them, giving each thanks as she had given to Arya.

 

Arya was left standing dumbfounded in the aftermath as she glanced up to the stage to see Joffrey Baratheon ascend it, the spectators clapping and howling as he waved at them, laughed himself, and bowed to try and match what Margaery had done only minutes prior. The rush to Arya’s ears made all the noise drown out as he gave a toast to everyone there— _but most of all, myself_ , he joked, only not really. Arya knew it wasn’t a joke.

 

Joffrey held up his glass, and everyone in the crowd who had one raised theirs as well, and they all drank together. Joffrey downed his cup, raised it up in the air one last time, and placed it on the table behind him before accepting the crowd’s praise in a lavish attempt of self-indulgence. He continued to soak up their praise with waves in their direction, laughter, and further jokes until his feet lost their steady balance on the pavilion’s cloth beneath his feet. He stumbled, gathering a gasp from the crowd and inquiries to his well-being.

 

“I’m all right!” Joffrey hollered out, patting his chest. “Just a bit of—just a bit of—drink went down the wrong pipe!”

 

Arya whirled her head towards the crowd, looking for her sister. Alarm welled up in her, and she couldn’t see Sansa, so she turned back to the steps on the side of the pavilion. She could use the steps to stand taller so she could see better, but it drew her attention back to Joffrey.

 

He was choking, his face turning a horrid purple color as his eyes reddened in their sockets. He collapsed to the stage amidst a torrent of cries from onlookers. Bodies rushed around her, pushing and shoving their way through towards the pavilion as they surged in madness, all of them trying to reach Joffrey, but Arya turned away from him, searching desperately through the crowd for Sansa.

 

She had to find her sister before it was too late.

 

_* * *_

 

Sansa laughed at something that was said, a joke perhaps, because it was funny. They had all laughed in their little group away from the pavilion. None of them had been paying attention to the speeches, and Sansa had her own reasons for ignoring them tonight. Most of them were to be given by Margaery and Joffrey, and had been so far. Since she wanted nothing to do with either of them, finding a little bit solace away from them in an old group of friends from school was nice while it lasted.

 

It had not lasted very long. Somewhere ahead of them, there was a commotion. It had grown in size until it had dispersed through the crowd at an alarming rate, catching Sansa’s attention as well as that of her friends. Amongst questions of _what is going on_ and _where are they going_ , Sansa found herself trying to gaze about and find the source of the trouble. Someone bumped into her cup, spilling juice all over her dress and prompting a gasp from her lips.

 

Screams cut through the air, chilling Sansa to the bone and freezing her in place. It was but for a moment until the crowd began to rush past her, pushing to and fro. Elbows hit her, knocking her cup from her hand completely. Looking about for her friends, Sansa saw them hurrying forward as well. Everyone was rushing toward the commotion. Forgetting her fallen cup, Sansa found herself drawn to the tumult as well. Something was terribly wrong. It was terribly, terribly wrong, but she knew it was too late to stop it, whatever it was.

 

The throngs of heads gave way to the pavilion far ahead, and Sansa could only make out so much from a distance, but it wasn’t so hard to figure it out despite how far away she was from the bulk of it. It didn’t change the fact that there was a dead body on stage, and that Cersei Lannister was howling over it, screaming as she half dragged it onto her lap, sobbing and demanding for justice, for blood, for whoever had murdered her precious baby boy.

 

Her precious baby boy . . . _Joffrey_ , Sansa realized, everything going cold in her as the realization set in that Joffrey was dead.

 

Before any questions could be raised in her head, a hand grasped her wrist hard and tugged her away from the spot in which she stood, the force demanding her to walk with it or fall to the wet grass beneath her feet. “Please, stop, you’re hurting _me_ —”

 

“We must go, and we must go quickly,” the man said without looking back at her. His grip on her wrist did not yield, and Sansa found herself having to walk with him hastily or else fall down. “For your safety, we have to get you out of here, Sansa Stark. Make no mistake about that.”

 

“I don’t even know who you are,” Sansa threw back at him, “so if you don’t stop right this instant and explain to me what is going on, I will scream!”

 

He stopped then, as she had requested, and his face when he turned around and looked at her was not at all unfamiliar, and it caused her to gasp in surprise.

 

“Mr. Baelish,” Sansa found herself exclaiming, breathless from both shock and shot nerves. She regarded him with wide and wary eyes, recalling he was not a very trustworthy person the last time they had dealings with him. She couldn’t remember what it was, why she didn’t trust him, but it was something Arya had told her. She was sure of it. “What are you doing here? Why are you grabbing me like this? Let go of me at once!”

 

She sounded quite demanding despite her racing heart. He had no right to grab her in such a way, after all, and she wasn’t going to stand for it. He certainly was in no position to enforce it.

 

Petyr did let go of her, but only just so. His hand lingered in the air above hers. “You mustn’t be frightened of me, Sansa,” he urged in a whisper. “I am only here to help, and I am an old friend of your mother’s. Cersei Lannister is about to turn her eye on you if we don’t get out of here immediately, and I am sure you know the threats she has made against you. Please.” He held his hand out to her. “You must trust me to get you back to your family safely. Now. Before it’s too late.”

 

Her feet backed away from him of their own accord, her heart pounding in her ears. “My mother may have known you, Mr. Baelish, but I do not . . . ” Dizziness swept over Sansa, and she felt herself losing her balance. Her feet gave out beneath her, but strong arms caught her and stopped her fall.

 

“Trust in that, sweetling,” the voice whispered to her as the arms scooped her up into their embrace. It was a small frame, but it was strong enough to carry her. “Now, we must be going.”

 

The world swayed back and forth as she felt herself being carried off, her mind straying further and further away from consciousness.

 

Perhaps it was the terror of the moment, or the fear she had been living in for the past few months, or a spiked drink she had tasted only moments ago, or maybe it was just an accumulation of everything altogether, but the world rushed away into a tunnel of darkness.

 

Though before everything closed to black, in the distance she swore she heard Arya’s voice calling out her name.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I’m Here for Your Entertainment](https://archiveofourown.org/works/845667) by [Helholden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helholden/pseuds/Helholden)




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